#low poly edgehog

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HELLO?? NEW TRAILER???

fUCKING?????? METAL OVERLORD, HELLO??????

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realizing i.. don't actually know that much about my canon's Sonic.

i know he at least tried to catch me when we saved the ARK from crashing into the planet [i'm still not 100% sure if he actually managed to catch me or not], but other than being rival-friend-acquaintances...

i don't think i really know him. not even remotely like i know Rouge or Omega.

and, for some reason, that bothers me.

[service-animal-shadow]

cross-posted from dreamwidth, because i really like this entry. that's about it lol

in which i talk noema about my bond with Maria, and get sappy about fanworks ♡

Content Warnings: mentions of death [shootings]. spoilers for Sonic Adventure 2. [if any other warnings need to be added, just let me know!]

divider by cafekitsune

Ever since I awoke as Shadow, and even a bit before that, I have deeply missed Maria. To say she was my only friend on the Space Colony ARK would be a gross over-simplification of the bond we had. “Siblings” feels like an incorrect but not wholly inaccurate label, & “friends” does not scratch the surface. Dr. Kintobor was definitely important to me, as both my creator and a protector of sorts, but Maria was the person I was around pretty much every waking moment of my early life. It was weird if I wasn’t near her, or at least within shouting distance.

I was primarily created to provide blood transfusions for her, and eventually anyone else with her illness or similar, but we latched onto each other in a much deeper way. We were similarly aged [both of us children], and she was all too eager to teach me things outside my knowledge of basic functions and how to follow commands. She taught me... everything. Everything she was learning, everything she’d learned in her younger childhood. Colors, spelling, writing, history, sciences. Eventually I was learning alongside her, rather than strictly from her.

Post self-actualization, or rather during that process and after, I would describe myself as her service animal. Her altruism rubbed off on me, and I wanted to give back to her in a meaningful way. It was fulfilling to help her in other ways outside of literally being her medicine; that aspect was almost mundane. I was so used to providing for her like that, I wanted something I could do. I was there for her on good days, when she would lead me around to explore the ARK and play elaborately silly games, and I was there for her on her awful days — when she couldn’t get out of bed, or even so much as speak, due to severe flare ups. I taught myself what to do for her when she was in a wheelchair, when she was bedridden, when she was using a cane, and when she was being a fearless scamp. I essentially tasked-trained myself.

I wasn’t so much as strictly caring for her, perhaps like a nurse or doctor would [that was a duty her grandfather took on], but rather I was her companion. More than a sibling or friend, and absolutely more than a pet. I was a tool, an aid, for her. I still wear that descriptor proudly. That’s not to dismiss my personhood; more so that it was my role for her alongside my personhood.

Maria’s death is… not hard to talk about. I don’t think I have exotrauma about it, but the noema about her murder does leave a particularly hollow ache in my chest. The thought of who and what she could’ve been, had she survived being shot or not been in that situation in the first place, haunts me. On days when I’m more Shadow than anything else, it makes me angry if I dwell on it for too long; what G.U.N denied her, what they took not only from me, but from humanity as a whole.

They robbed Earth/Mobius of what she could’ve been.

Now… this section might seem like it’s veering off topic, but, before I was aware of the word for my unhumanness, I did a lot of roleplaying online. Narratively playing toys with characters from fandoms; namely, Sonic the Hedgehog [as a franchise]. I took up writing Shadow more often than not, because I liked his character and he felt very natural to write. [Looking back, all I have to say is LOL, fictionkinity upon ye.] One roleplay partner I had wrote a library's worth of wonderful fanfic — in which, alongside many other events, Maria had been saved. She recovered from what would’ve been a fatal gunshot wound via the help of an ARK scientist. We often played around in his version of events, and it happened that Character-Shadow wasn’t aware she was alive until years later when they were reunited.

And as much as I would love to be from that source, I have to say that is not my Maria. I am not a Shadow that gets to keep my best friend, much as I wish I could be.

Looking back, those roleplays were very wistful and wish-fulfillment-y, which is fine and good. A lot of fans like to explore this “fix-it-fic” storytelling, so it’s fairly prevalent in both fic and fanart. As a fan outside of being fictionkind, I used to be indifferent about these types of fanworks. Now, even if I don’t read too many, I like them a fair bit — they’re like that one Doctor Who episode that I still adore. “This time, everybody lives!!” They’re bright and hopeful and brimming with joy, which is something a lot of us need. I’m more than fine with people wanting Maria to survive, to come back in some way, to be able to become more than a plot device. Some are a bit listless in wanting her to come back, not having any purpose in mind other than “she gets to live!!” which… I think I’m okay with, at the end of the day. Sometimes that’s enough of a reason. Which leads me into a bit of going over fan interpretations of what she was like before her death; a lot of which ring very close to my own canon.

The Maria that we see in all Sonic media is, at her core, a stock character. She exists on screen as long as the story requires her, and only displays the archetypal traits necessary to her role. What others extrapolate from that can vary, but I’ve seen many characterize her as smart and mischievous, brave and persevering. This largely gets explored in flash-back fics of her and Shadow on the ARK, before G.U.N swept in and militarized the Ultimate Life-form project / shut it down completely. They’re very tender writings, a lot of which I no doubt imprinted on & thus probably influenced my noemata of what Maria was like. But I don’t really care if they did or if they didn’t. They’re comforts. Windows into [an interpretation of] what was.

All this to say that I miss her. There is no greater call to action or message within this writing, I just miss her dearly and wanted to write about how comforting it is that so many people think about and make art of her.

It makes me incredibly happy that she’s more than memorialized by fans. I don’t know what else I wanted to say with this, other than I’m touched, deeply so, that many people keep her memory colorful and alive.

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i meant to make a quick post MUCH sooner, but.

sega acknowledging Shadow's role as medicine is fucking huge

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i don't know why my shifts have been so persistent over the last week or so. they just kinda have been ¯\_(=_=)_/¯

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hu h.

i told myself i wasn't going to bother with the comic iteration(s) of my fictomere [because i would Not be able to get through that in a timely manner], but. a quick video analysis about Archie-Shadow's character & arc kinda... blew me away.

my canon is definitely not from the comics, at least in terms of story. but my characterization is similar. not exact; but similar enough. the earnesty, the immediate willingness to drop any aggression [performative or otherwise] to help save people. the staunch morals, the fact i'm not actually all that special amidst the roster of basically gods, the commitment to purpose.

that last bit especially. one comment within the video about Archie-Shadow viewing himself as a tool, the ultimate tool [to protect Mobius], hit rather close in a way i wasn't expecting.

there's a reason this blog's name is what it is.

i was debating changing it, recently - possibly to something a little more "covert" or maybe some kind of attempt at wordplay. but my noemata about being a tool for healing, for helping, is too central. i'm a service animal without a handler; my task training & intended purpose drives me to help whoever i can.

i think my "arc," within my canon's narrative, focuses on overcoming expectations of being destructive. so many view me as a weapon, something to be wielded, something to point at an enemy. but i think it also focuses on... not quite "letting go," but.. redirecting my energy. helping in ways i didn't think i could.

i [and Team Dark as a whole] don't join G.U.N, in my canon. i'm not focused on saving the world, but rather learning to live in it and take care of it. i get a chance to figure myself out, have a support system, and just...

experience the world.

hm. i guess it does all come back to a promise to Maria, no matter the iteration.

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unpleasant & scattered noemata ahead. absolutely feel free to skip this if you're not in the right headspace.

mMmm don't like that i can't remember anything from when i was in stasis on prison island.

i think they did stuff to me. i think they made me do shit. i think they forced Gerald specifically to coax me into doing shit.

i never understood where [or when] i "learned" how to fight; how i just sort of knew how to manipulate chaos energy into blasts and concentrated bolts. i don't know where the hell i got my skates.

[huh. i guess my memories were tampered with, to an extent, because holy hell. that entire section is just blank static that i Know shouldn't be. might've been a side effect of the stasis method they used to keep me contained? it basically left me in a chronologically frozen state; i didn't process time, at all. it felt like i'd been sealed away for only a matter of seconds or mere minutes.]

i can only speculate what was done to me on prison island, post-ARK raid. i can assume that i was tortured; put through physical testing to see if i really was immortal / the "ultimate life-form." i assume they were testing the limits of my chaos energy cycling, too. i have visceral reactions to hospital settings & lab coats [ranging from fight to flight to freeze], which didn't stem from the ARK. well. not from the original team that created me.

[they were always humane. if they were testing anything that could cause odd or harmful side effects, i was informed of everything that would and could happen.]

no one the ARK wanted me to be a weapon. the funding for my project originated for its medicinal properties. Gerald was only threatened after G.U.N learned about my creation & the military potential for chaos energy. that's when they demanded the project be weaponized, or its funding would be completely cut off. they threatened Gerald and sent their own scientists to "help" shift gears, which is what really set everything horrible in motion.

come to think of it, i'm pretty sure the biolizard came after my inception [in my canon]. it was created in an attempt to make something "less temperamental" [than me], but that backfired so badly that they just sealed it away on the ARK. explains why i never knew about it until later.

mm. don't like the thought of G.U.N fully taking over the ARK after they gave up on weaponizing me. though, that would explain how Gerald left the messages for me, and was able to set up everything.

fuc k.

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thinkin' about writing a satbk AU fic about Shadow getting dumped into the Arthurian book [instead of Sonic]. for funsies & because i think the themes would be neat to play around with!

like, Merlina's deep seeded fear of death could be super interesting to explore from Shad's POV. i feel like it would possibly come to a similar conclusion to Sonic's actual talk, but with a different flavor. "I am on your level. I not only know your pain, but understand it in a way few others do" paired with "Attempting to control the ones you are afraid of loosing will only drive you apart."

that and swords go brrrrrrrr. plus i think it'd be neat for Shades to explore a medieval-fantasy setting.

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feelin' insanely off model today. really need to find some suitable inhibitor ring analogs >:/

preferably some kind of clasping/hinged metal bracelets, but i'd take leather-bracelet cuffs at this point. shifts have been really strong lately & it feels wrong not having 'em

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somebody make a shadow animatic to this about going back to the ARK to mourn the ghosts of the scientists, bitter and angry that they don't resent him or blame him for their deaths, & then him later deciding to help save earth via stopping the ARK from falling.

i'm somebody, i'm gonna do that eventually-

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i just wrote a little over 1,000 words on how misty eyed fanworks about Maria make me, and how wistfully overjoyed i am that so many lovingly write her as a full character in their fics

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yagamimi_hog's Maria designs are THE closest to the Maria in my canon that i've ever seen

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i think Maria would like hot mulligan. she'd probably like mid-western emo in general

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haven't had time/energy to inspect any feelings i might have about the new game, but.. i'm definitely interested! "modern" Shadow (i.e, post-shadow the hedgehog game Shadow) isn't me, but i'm interested in his storyline.

the aesthetics in SonicXShadow is funky already, and i'm glad Shadow seems like he's allowed to be "cool"/edgy again.

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god. i really am just some little cartoon hedgehog, sometimes.

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sucks being tired all the time & having brain fog thick as my ass 😔