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heroictoonz · 27 days ago

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How Sweet That Taste of Remembrance

Ships: Past Lancelot/Sonic, Past Sally/Sonic (mentioned, not focused), Sonadow

Warnings: N/A

AO3 L!nk in the Comments!

Sonic had written the letter more times than he could count. Practicing his words over and over as he tried to find what to say and how to say it. How was he supposed to even write something like this?

How did he tell his husband in the past that he was suddenly shot forward into a future where he and everyone they knew were long gone? How did he explain his eventual decision to stay…

It was a lot. A lot of emotions and nowhere near enough words. Too many words and none of them were what he needed.

It took him months to write the letter. That part didn’t really stress him out. If his plan worked, he could leave it for Lance the very morning the knight would have woken up to an empty bed.

An empty bed… Sonic’s bed had also been empty.

Sonic was never one for serious relationships. He could count on his hand how many he’d had and with those same fingers how long they’d lasted. In a lot of cases it was a mutual understanding when they ended. Sonic was just too much for a lot of people.

Sally had always kept up with him in a way few could. She was a lot like Lance, if he was honest. They both grounded him, kept him from floating off into the clouds, never to be seen again. He saw the same spark in their eyes when Sonic would banter with them, doing or saying something just to get a rise. Even when it worked, both of them were eager to snap back with something just as strong. Worthy opponents in both wit and strength.

Neither of them took it to heart when Sonic ran off for days on end. Neither of them questioned when he came back, needing help brushing the leaves and flowers and twigs from his spines. Both of them set him free knowing he would come back to them. Just as well as both of them would stake his feet to the ground when they knew he needed it.

He always knew he had a type but this was starting to get ridiculous. Especially when he started to recognize his most recent target of affections. Of course, there were a few key points that made him a bit more uncomfortable about it all.

Shadow was also a lot like Lance.

Not just in personality as Sally was but in physicality as well. Of course they weren’t the exact same.

Shadow’s fur was a darker, almost night black where Lance was closer to a smokey grey. Shadow like the dark of his name sake, Lance like the metal of his. Their stripes were similar, both a nice red, though Lance’s were thinner. Their eyes were also both red but Shadow’s were bright and alien while Lance’s were a deep burgundy. And Shadow was alien. Very alien. Not in any way Sonic disliked. There was this otherworldly beauty to the details of Shadow’s features that made him stick out in their own way. His eyes shined brighter than normal. His claws and fingers just a bit longer.

They were similar but not exact. Sometimes Sonic wondered if there was a chance the hedgehog DNA used was from Lance’s bloodline. If that would somehow explain the similarities.

However, even in these thoughts, Sonic concluded that his mourning was still ongoing and any relationship he might want to pursue with Shadow would need to be at a later date. Instead, he kept rewriting his letter.

It wasn’t that he didn’t have the words to say, in fact quite the opposite, he had plenty of words to say. Years worth of words to say. But this letter was too important, his emotions too strong. What was put in there would be the last not just Lance but anyone from that time would probably ever hear of him. It was why he was sitting and giving much longer pause to what was going into it.

He decided even if he wasn’t done with the letter, he would go ahead and get its delivery set up. After all, he didn’t see Silver all that often.

Sonic made sure that the next time Silver was in their neck of the woods that he pull the other to the side and officially ask him for help.

“You said you needed to ask me something?” Silver questioned with a light tilt of his head.

Sonic was leaning against the wall with a nonchalance that was pretty common for him. He gave a nod and a hum. “I, uh, well I need a favor,” he started with.

“A favor?” Silver questioned in return. “What kinda favor?”

Sonic chewed on the inside of his lip in thought. He hadn’t really thought about how he would go about asking without having to explain way more than he wanted to.

“There’s this… letter I need sent out.”

Silver frowned and crossed his arms. “I’m not a post office, Sonic,” he bit.

Sonic groaned and let his head fall against the wall behind him. “It’s a time travel thing, Silver.”

“Oh,” Silver muttered, dropping his arms back to his side. “Wait, you need to time travel mail a letter?”

The speedster sighed and ran a hand along the back of his neck. “Somethin’ like that,” he mumbled. “Listen, I really can’t explain it all but… I need you to go into the past and put down a letter for someone. Could you do that for me?”

Silver’s frown kept as he looked at Sonic before looking down at his own feet. His hands found his hips as he gave a soft sound of frustrated consideration. “I dunno… Sending a letter back in time like that could cause major disruptions to the timeline.”

“What if—” Sonic hesitated with his next words. He needed to convince Silver to do this without telling him the whole story. But the first thought he had to do just that he really didn’t like. “What if I let you read the letter before you take it? You can decide if it’s gonna cause a problem or not.”

Silver looked back up at him with a questioning brow. “Why is this so important to you?”

“It… it just is,” Sonic mumbled. “Listen, Silv, I really can’t get into the details you kinda just gotta trust me with this one, okay?”

Silver’s frown didn’t really let up but his shoulders dropped just a hair and his eyes turned back towards the ground. When he finally did look back up at Sonic, it was with a drawn-out sigh. “I can read it first?”

Sonic nodded.

“Alright. I’ll do it.”

***

Sonic had forgotten about the letter.

‘Forgotten’ was a strong word. More like put it on the back burner. Every word he wrote felt like not enough and every paragraph was too much. He wasn’t really sure what to do. He decided that continuously stressing over it wasn’t gonna help either way. Silver had already agreed to take the letter when it was done and it could be dropped off the very morning Sonic disappeared so there wasn’t really that much of a time crunch. It just had to happen… eventually.

Eventually didn’t come as life continued to pass by. It was actually a while before Sonic even looked at the letter again. By then he had actually started dating Shadow.

They’d finally stopped dancing around each other and actually talked about their feelings. Since then things had been great. There wasn’t much of a honeymoon phase for them; they just weren’t that kinda people. They were happy to just keep being as they always were just with some added romance in the mix.

However, it was only a little under a year into their relationship before their first real hitch. Shadow learned about Lance.

Sonic had gotten sick right after the new year and was very lucky to have a loving and attentive boyfriend during the time. However, the fever that had plagued him caused his mind to cloud and any thought almost completely lost to static.

When Shadow had come up to him during one of these moments, in his lack of clarity, Sonic had for some reason confused him for Lance. Even to the point of calling him the wrong name.

He’d tried to wave it off as being delusional from his fever, but even he could tell that his lie was only making Shadow more anxious. The anxiety had clearly hit its peak when Shadow cornered him, trying to force him into telling the truth of the mysterious ‘Lance’.

But Sonic couldn’t say. He couldn’t find the words or even the heart to try and tell the story again. The fear of not being believed returned to him. The feelings he had let lie in the past coming back to haunt him. It was all just too much.

Sonic snapped at Shadow before running off.

That was when he picked the letter back up. He remembered having left it in his junk of a house and dug it out. He made his way off with it to Solaria. Somewhere far off that hopefully Shadow or anyone else wouldn’t think to look for him.

He sat with the letter under a tree that had just begun to start budding again in the early year. He read over what he had last written with a sigh. He remembered why he’d stopped writing it for a bit. The words had just stopped working properly. The letter was like alphabet soup to his addled mind. He doubted he would actually be able to work on it in such a state.

Sonic put it to the side and laid back against the grass. He thought about Lance and the kingdom. About all his friends he’d made and then had to leave behind. He wondered how their lives ended up. He knew the fate of the Grand Kingdom, lost to war and to time after the peak of his rule. There was nothing left but ruins.

The very ruins that when Sonic found himself back in his own time he ran to and dug through. He hardly even knew what he was looking for at the time. Maybe Caliburn? Some evidence of the knights? Maybe even something to prove that it hadn’t all been some wild dream the whole time…

He knew it couldn’t have been a dream. No matter how long he was left questioning it, there was just no way it could have been a dream. There was no way that whole part of his life he’d lived was just a figment of his imagination.

He picked the note up again and looked over it.

Maybe it was time to tell someone.

He thought about if Shadow would even believe him or not, but in all truth, he wasn’t sure it mattered anymore. If anyone would understand the emotional impact of losing a home and a family so suddenly, it was Shadow. Maybe he wouldn’t believe him, but Sonic trusted Shadow to not make fun of him or try to call him a liar.

There was no doubt in Sonic’s mind that if he told Shadow the truth that the other would listen. Maybe that was all that really mattered. Not someone to believe him, but for someone to genuinely listen to him.

So Sonic found Shadow.

He wasn’t expecting to find him at that old trailer. Shadow must have been looking for him anywhere he could think, even though Sonic himself hadn’t been to his and Tails’ old childhood squat in many years.

He gripped the hilt of his sword tighter as he ran up to face Shadow.

The conversation had gone well. Sonic didn’t explain nearly as much as he was planning to, the words just kept getting stuck somewhere inside him, but he explained enough to ease Shadow’s fears and to feel more at ease in himself as well.

And Shadow had believed him. Honestly and truly believed him. It was better than he had hoped by far. When they went home Sonic found a comfortable spot snuggled up against Shadow on his couch to calm down from the rush of emotions. He also thought about the letter.

After he’d left Shadow’s house Sonic pulled out the letter once more. He reread what he had and then grabbed a fresh paper and started again. Finally, he finished the letter. With a clear mind and a fresh heart he wrote down what would be the last words he would give to that part of his life.

***

When Sonic handed Silver the letter the other gave a raised eye ridge. “What’s this?” he asked.

“That letter I need you to deliver, remember?”

Recognition flashed on Silver’s face. “That was so long ago,” he sighed. “I’d forgotten…” He looked down at the letter and back at Sonic. There was clear hesitation in his expression.

Sonic waved a hand at him. “Go on,” he sighed. “Read it. Make sure it’s up to your time traveler standards.”

The look of hesitation didn’t leave but Silver flipped open the letter. His face changed the second his eyes landed on the page. He looked back up at Sonic but the blue hedgehog was keeping his own eyes to the side. Silver didn’t say anything. Instead, he continued to read.

After a moment he closed it again and sighed. “There’s nothing about the future in this, at least nothing that could cause a problem,” he finally said.

Sonic looked up at him. “So you’ll send it?”

Silver frowned but gave a nod. “I’ll need the exact date and place but… yeah. I can send it. It’s just… what is this all about, Sonic?”

Sonic met his eyes. He saw so many emotions he wasn’t even sure what to make of half of them. He ran a hand over the back of his neck before giving Silver a tired smile. “I’ll tell ya over a chili dog someday. Just not today, okay?”

That gave Silver pause but he nodded all the same.

***

Lancelot woke up to the lack of soft blue fur under his arm. It wasn’t that uncommon that Sonic would rise before him. Probably out with Gawain or Percival for a morning spar. Or even with the blacksmith just “hanging out” as he’d described it.

He raised from their bed and stretched out his arms, throwing a hand through his quills with a sigh. He’d gotten up to reach for his armor and start his day, but was quick to notice a folded paper with his name scrawled on it resting just atop the desk.

He walked to it and flipped it open to read.

My dearest Lancelot,

I know this letter will find you more confused than anything else, and I’m sorry for that. I guess even Merlina’s spells have a time limit on them. I found a way to get this letter to you as soon as possible. I wanted you to know that I’m safe and alive, but that I am gone.

I found myself waking up back in my own time, the life I held before I found myself in your hands. I do not believe there is any real way for me to come back to you without knowing the sort of magic Merlina practiced. And even if there was, it is with a heavy heart that I admit I have decided it’s best I stay here. It hurts to leave you, but The Grand Kingdom was not my time or my home. It needed me and I took care of it in those moments, but my home needs me too. The people and planet I left behind have always leaned on me and I can’t abandon them.

Leaving the kingdom without a king will have repercussions, I know. But I also know that it’s nothing you and the others can’t handle. I trust you all to find the right person to lead you and take the kingdom into prosperity. The history books tell of many great years for the kingdom to come and I know you will all prosper without me.

Tell the others of this letter. Tell them that I am safe and that their memories will be with me forever. Tell them that I wish them all the best and that the years our lives crossed paths were just as beautiful and important to me as any other.

The same goes to you.

Lancelot, my knight, you will stay close to my heart for the rest of my days. I don’t know what comes after in this life, but if you see me, know that you will always be a part of me. No matter who I meet and who I lay with in the future, I will always love you now as I did then. And please, do the same. Remember me, but do not let my loss end you. Keep moving forward, my love. Continue to live and to learn and thrive in your life and your time.

With Love,

Sonic

Lancelot held the letter to his chest and fell to his knees in tears.

#sonic the hedgehog #sonic and the black knight #sir lancelot #lansoni #shadow the hedgehog #sonadow #silver the hedgehog #fan fiction #fan fic #toonz writing #idk what else to tag this lol

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dodgebolts · 2 years ago

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the moment that absolutely no one has been waiting for... here are the results of the dtblr survey that went out last week! Thank you to the 650 people who responded, easily eclipsing the 598 responses that were submitted in September :]

Open the read more to see the results!

Starting out, we have a newcomer to our top 8, welcome Awesamdude, who stole a spot from Quackity (20.7% -> 3.1%). Since the last survey, more people say they main all 3 Dream Team members and less people are maining their friends, most of them slipping under 10% of respondents saying they mained them save for the lovely Foolish Gamers.

Next, there was an increase in people who came for and still are here for the Dream Team—with a decrease in the proportion of respondents for nearly every other category. Dream team forever!

While most people (85%) have been around before 2022, we have a greater proportion of newer people around now! In the last survey, that number was even greater at 93%. So don't feel bad for being new, it's actually way more likely than you think, and a very warm welcome to the 5% of people who joined after the face reveal/meetup <3

Next is a question that I think is really interesting: has watching the Dream team influenced how people play Minecraft? More people now don't play as much, which tracks considering that they play Minecraft a lot less than they used to.

Now for a rather sore subject for a lot of people, since there's been quite a shift in who plays in MCC since the last time. In the last poll, 60.8% of people said they watched Dream. Now, those viewers have dispersed across creators or just stopped watching altogether, with both George and Sapnap gaining 10% from their numbers in the fall. However, 25% of people said that they don't watch anymore, a huge jump from the 4.5% in the fall. RIP MCC Dream, you're missed severely by the community <3

Next up, Trust Issues has managed to nearly catch up to some of Dream's released music, gaining 8 percentage points from the last survey. Dream if you're out there your fans want it really badly. Release it just for us?

Since the fall, we've seen the official end of the DSMP, so this is more of a legacy question, which is reflected pretty well in the statistics shifting towards people who either don't watch or are very casual about it, our lorehead population shrinking by 4 percentage points from the first survey.

These statistics haven't moved too much since the first one, the trends going pretty much as predicted with following decreasing from main -> alt -> priv (with the exception of Dream whose alt is often confused for his main) and with George and Sapnap having fewer people following them than Dream.

The statistics shift from this question is really interesting, especially given all the shit that's gone down on Twitter since the first survey. The percentage of dtblr who joined the fandom on there increased 7.7%, a gain that knocked down nearly every other platform's percentages. AO3 also makes its debut in the top 6, tying with Reddit exactly.

Much like the twitter following question, these statistics didn't shift too much, with the YouTube algorithm and word of mouth from other people/creators doing most of the heavy lifting of marketing for the Dream Team. Shoutout to the people who found out through either Heat Waves or MrBeast, you guys are on like 2 ends of a horrific spectrum y'all are strong as hell LOL

Now for some shared fandom trauma, these results also didn't change too much from the first survey. However, for this iteration I added Supernatural, as I probably should've done the first time considering this IS the SPN website after all. I managed to grab a few more people than last time out of the 'none of the above' category with its inclusion, so hi all my former and current SPN bloggers o/ <- has never seen the show before

A vast majority of us have watched gaming content in some form before, and fewer people this time have never watched gaming content before. From those who specified which games they'd watched, the titles ranged far and wide, so it's really cool to see all of us under the dtblr umbrella :)

Once again, this question showcases how lurkers truly carry the community on their backs—there's a small decrease in lurkers from last time and an increase in blogging answers, so it seems like some of our lurkers started posting which is awesome :D

Over half of us don't really watch any other MC servers, but there's still a ton of people who like watching them! From the last time I ran the survey, most of the servers—save for Empires and Karmaland—now have fewer dtblr watchers. The QSMP makes a strong debut on the board though, eclipsing half of the other options.

This was a really interesting question, though it seems like the vast majority of people either continued posting on the same blog or took a break and just jumped back into the fray! Also a late welcome to the ~15% of people who either weren't here or started posting after <3

The answers to this question showed some of the most interesting shifts from last fall's data. Fewer people seem to be listening regularly, and the proportion of people who responded no is nearly doubled from the fall's 21%.

These data points were also really interesting to see shift from the fall! Of note, fewer people like and tolerate Jackbox, and more people seem to have warmed up to FPS games—Fortnite, CS:GO, and Valorant all have fewer people in the "don't like & won't watch" category. Still, Valorant is easily the most hated game of the 6 while Geoguessr is still almost universally loved/tolerated.

As expected in the shipping category, DNF dominates any other ships, with Karlnap easily taking the second place. The proportion of Toosh enjoyers has doubled since the fall, up from 14.7%, while the number of non-shippers has halved. Additionally, the proportion of Karlnapity enjoyers has plummeted from 25.4% to less than 10%. Otherwise, most ships have stayed within 3-4 percentage points of their fall numbers!

Once again, Dream seems to have forced the hands of nearly half of us, turning non-RPF shippers into the RPF fandom we are today. Interestingly, the number of "yes" respondents has nearly doubled from the fall, while fewer people responded that they still don't ship RPF. As would make Dream happy probably, the pie chart is colored blue and green.

Now onto some of the demographic questions, we've continued to be very heavily biased towards North America and Europe, with nearly 85% of us coming from those two continents. Compared to the fall, we've gotten proportionally more South American and Oceanian rep. Hey to the Asians/Australians who are probably going to see this when it's first posted! o/

Once again, the majority of us seem to be around the same age as our streamers, with 80% of us falling between the ages of 18 and 30. Don't fret, though! From the fall, the proportion of respondents in both the <18 and >30 age brackets have increased. All in all, nothing too surprising.

The pride parade is still running from last fall, with approximately the same percentage of people identifying as LGBTQIA+ or unsure. Just in time for pride month in a day or so!

I'm not sure if I was just miscounting but I could not for the life of me get all of these little squares into a proper rectangle, so just bear with my weird organization here. Regardless, the majority of us rep the blue and green as our favorite colors, with multiple people specifying the hex code of George's minecraft shirt or a classic teal.

It's been about a month since this has been out, and we still unfortunately haven't gotten It Takes Two back. We're still in the phase 42% of people believe that we're going to stay in for a while, getting bounced back and forth between Dream and George hoping that they can get the other wrangled for it. #I_BELIEVE!

This was kind of a cruel question for most of us, but to the 11 people who answered that have met any of them, know that you're in a very select group of users. I'm jealous!

Now to answer the age-old question of the dtblr 1%, it constitutes those of you with around or over 5,000 followers, while a majority of people have less than 50 followers or just no blog at all. As with most other follower polls I've seen floating around, the responses were heavier towards the bottom, but as is the common advice/adage, follower count means very little here—just start chatting and posting!

For the final question, I thought it'd be interesting to see what dtblr's academic interests are, and also to reaffirm or break my belief that George is like a flame to the moths of CS/Engineering-focused people, which was at least initially supported by the data from the fall. We've got people from all across the diversity of academic fields, with the most people indicating that they're interested in the arts and humanities.

As for my hypothesis: among non-George mains, the proportion of CS/Engineering people is about 5.5%, whereas 18.3% of George mains indicated that they're interested in CS/Engineering. In fact, I took a closer look at all the people who noted their interest in CS/Engineering, and nearly 70% of them said that they mained George. Like I said, moths to a flame. or something. I'm right there with y'all 🫡

That's all! Thanks so much to everyone for responding and waiting for me to get through all of this data, it's always a big task but I love seeing the results. Until next time!

#lyss analyzes #dtblr general survey #idk what else to tag this LOL #sorry it took so long dskgjhdlsjfg #hope it was worth the wait!

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