#maria lives au

[madychi]

What if I gave you… a Maria Lives AU?

[samshroom-likes-sonic]

gotta have the classic maria lives au, so heres me brain dumping abt my thoights on a maria lives au

maria, rather than being shot and dying, actually managed to be put into a stasis chamber. GUN put her there because they believed that since shadow's blood had been used to help her stay alive, that she would become dangerous to them as well but hopefully useful in the future as a way of controlling shadow, or as a soldier/weapon herself

so shadow never sees her get shot, the last thing he saw before being sent away was maria being taken by the GUN soldiers

gerald still thinks that maria is dead, and so still manipulates shadows memories and goes insane

events still happen as originally shown in sa2 and shadow the hedgehog, up until shadow finally receives his full memories back and gets a sneaking suspicion that maria might still be around

so with the help of rouge and omega, they sneak around thru GUN files and find a series of 16 files, experiments and tests that GUN had ran during a period of 4 years (numbers r all rough estimates, we'll see how things go)

the files thankfully tell where shes being held in stasis, so team dark raids the GUN base and sneak her away

the base is like, lowkey super abandoned and only has minimal security and power, so shadow is like. Furious

they dont take her out of stasis yet, but rather they actually take her to tails, who is the smartest person they know that would be fine with them stealing a whole person from a govt organization without being eggman

so tails and the gang help maria get out of stasis, they stabilize her and her health, probably find some fun little secrets, and then boom

shadow has his sister back!!!

and so ensues the rest of the maria lives au where shes a classic sister and shadow feels happiness yayyyy

ill make art for this later im sure

[tamblerdraws]

I made a sonic au

Maria lives au :D

Basically she gets kidnapped by g.u.n. after the whole incident thing to like continue grandpa robotnik's work ig

She didn't know that Shadow was still alive tho (g.u.n. probably told her he was dead)

But then Sonic saves her (idk why they had to break into g.u.n. just yet,,, but they did) and tells her that Shadow is a-ok and so they get to reunite yippieeee

And now Maria hangs out with the whole cast :D

Additional stuff: I wanted to give her crow's feet after the savening bc I remember hearing that it happens when you smile and I think she would smile a lot after being rescued (you can't really see them tho womp womp)

Also I wanted to make her chonky to show how she is like doing well now,, also also she still usually wears the dress and stuff I just didn't know how to draw that and make it obvious that she was chonkier so she got the dress shirt and khakis treatment

Also (the final also) she turned her headband into goggles

[tuhbanbuv]

Y’all heard of Mobian Maria but have you heard of Black Arms Maria?

Basically this au is the standard “Maria Lives” au but she gets turned into a Black Arms. Cuz reasons.

I mean she no longer has NIDS but now that’s the least of her concerns—

[brucenorris007]

Maria lives and as a consequence Shadow ______

Yes, that’s all interesting, it matters, it does fundamentally change the foundation of narrative, his motivations, etc.

But what about Maria herself? Every side character in a larger narrative is the main character of their own life.

So. Maria Robotnik: What if she lived?

Would she be messy? After spending her whole life in a largely sterilized, nearly monochrome industrial environment alongside a population of scientists keeping samples, experiments and etc. in order, would she throw that aside once free from that environment, leaving things where she wanted, going back to get them, making piles at random?

Does she dig her toes in the sand and splash in the shallows of the sea? Would the smells, sights and sounds of nature–after so long in the artificial, manmade world that was the ARK–ever fail to quicken her pulse, spark something in her soul, at times terrify her?

I headcanon that she played chess; how else did stimulate her likely precocious mind on those days her body struggled the most?

How would she react to other Mobians? To the rest of her extended family, who may not have spoken as kindly of her, may not have been as proactive about her illness as Gerald, in a timeline where her life wasn’t a tragedy?

How would she have ‘raised’ Shadow, insofar as she might have done so as his sister? Gerald would’ve pulled every string possible, blackmailed up to and including POTUS to keep her from becoming a ward of the state, I think. Would she largely depart from civilization, discourage any interest Shadow showed in military weapons?

How does she express herself? Was she better with words than her little brother, or physically affectionate? Would she nurture plants? Dance? Sing? Run through the grass and forest and creeks barefoot until Shadow begged her to stop, worried about her health?

Was she a bookworm? Naive, or secretly quite perceptive and calculating? Was she introverted as her brother; or an extrovert who would’ve asked after every scientist’s life story had her illness not so often sapped her energy?

What’s her favorite food? Life on a space station, the meals probably weren’t all that diverse or exciting. What would she eat for the first time on Earth that caused her to burst into tears?

Would she be a night owl or an early bird? Time zones are worth mud on the ARK, after all; time actually dictated by the Earth’s rotational axis and circuit around the sun, could there be a bigger adjustment?

Did she share the apparently familial interest in the sciences? Would she have been as fascinated by ancient history and the chaos emeralds as her cousin and grandfather?

After walking on Earth with Shadow at her side, would she turn her eyes to the stars again; would she ever want to return to space?

She loved life; that we know for certain, if little else. She obviously knew something of the flaws in humanity in the hours immediately preceding her death, yet she chose kindness anyway. Would a decade, or two, or even five among humans bolster that strength of character, or erode it? Would she carry a pocket of simmering resentment, lethal yet contained by her persisting choice to be compassionate?

Had she lived, who might Maria Robotnik have been?

@generic-sonic-fan

[hersheysmcboom]

(SONIC 3 SPOILERS!)

(Shadow finds out Maria is alive and turned into an assassin by G.U.N)

Shadow: Maria?!

Maria: who the hell is Maria?

[d0d0-b0i]

silly

[mightyfoz]

Unicorn wars but the unicorns swap places with the bears!! not sure if anyone has thought of this idea, but i just thought what if the bears were just as vicious as they were in the movie, but instead they weren't the ones to evolve, but the unicorns did instead.

[tollsoftheclockwerkbelle]

what gets me about the shadow/maria dynamic is that it takes the trope of "weak helpless girl dies for a tragic plot device" and subverts it

Maria wasn't helpless in her fate. She did have a choice. Shadow would have been strong enough to protect them both (Where else could they even go? Would he need to hurt someone?) but instead she made a choice to protect Shadow.

Shadow's story isn't tragic because he failed to protect Maria and now spends the rest of his life tormented over it. Shadow's story is tragic because he is the strongest creature alive, but raw power isn't always enough, and his loving friend made a sacrifice to let him go hoping she was giving him a chance to learn compassion because she was strong!

Maria's purpose isn't that she's a weak little girl who dies. Maria's legacy is that she protects the strongest creature alive, and teaches it the strength of love.

Her character gives the moment purpose, not the other way around. Her willingness to die so he can go free, asking him to use his strength to protect the people of Earth, despite everything. It's her proof of love that gives Shadow's burden that kind of extreme weight. Shadow will live forever and with so much limitless power, would life be easy to discard without a second thought? Not Maria's. Not when she asked him to protect it. That weight will remind him, always.

[head---ache]

Oooo I have an idea!

Have you ever drawn Maria interacting with Emmie?

Its been a while since ive last drawn auntie maría 🥺

[mariatesstruther]

okay but a version of events in which tommy takes ellie to the fireflies, but NEITHER of them come back. and maria joel have to work together to get them back

[madychi]

More of the lil sibs ever!

[diveintoturmoil]

save me 2-3 goths save me

[tamblerdraws]

M a r i a

I saw a few cute outfits on pinterest and I decided to draw Maria in one of em

Except I didn't know how to draw certain aspects of one or the other so I combined em

I wanted to highlight her hair but the white background was a bother so I did. space thingy (also I know the lighting is probably wrong however. lighting is whatever I want it to be)

Also

my Maria Lives au but Also she's movie Maria now

Also I realized that I could make Maria's spiky pigtails point up and look like Shadow's quills,,,, yippieeee

I also wanted to add in red highlights bc I have decided that they either put Black Doom's dna or Shadow's dna in her to stabilize her and I wanted to put the red streaks in her hair (is it accurate? No. However that is Oki bc I like It)

[deimostes]

the life i live without you

[brucenorris007]

So there aren’t a lot of them, but I’ve seen a few Maria Lives AU’s floating around, some more developed than others. And they are developed and thought out and they explore themes they want to explore well.

My brain just tends to go... a different place, I guess? Might be the gremlin brain in me, but sometimes AU’s just put me in a mind of “But all those events in canon and” grabble grubble etc. So I wonder how a Maria Lives AU would actually work with the canon that, let’s say the games, have set up.

I mean, it’s unlikely that she’d ever get to actually meet the Mobians that Shadow usually interacts with; and Shadow himself wouldn’t interact with the Mobians we know (Rouge, Sonic, Tails, etc.) the same way either, since presumably he wouldn’t have been captured and put in stasis for 50 years if GUN hadn’t killed Maria.

He’d be 65 to Sonic’s 15, and Maria would be in her late 60′s if she lived long enough to see any of the events in the main canon happen. Adventure 2 would’ve unfolded way differently, assuming Eggman gets up to the same schemes he did in the game.

Which is plausible, since Shadow and Maria would both probably still have some mixed feelings about the ARK, even if they did spend formative years there. And GUN clearly though the place was haunted or whatever the reason they basically left it to be a floating satellite for that many decades.

I can picture Shadow, whose only signs of age are his general outlook on the world and on life, meeting an Eggman who still wants his help with some dumbass evil nonsense and just letting out a sigh. He plays along for a while if only because he knows Gerald’s scientist grandchild has a reputation that’s only grown as the breadth of his schemes gradually escalated from terrorizing remote islands to major cities and then the planet.

The redemption element of Adventure 2 would be lost, and even if Shadow did make friends with Sonic, their friendship wouldn’t be the same as what it is (okay, what it briefly was before Sega gave up on making him a nihilist and just made him Kmart Vegeta.)

And with no memory loss, any team up with Omega and Rouge would be purely incidental, though he would still take up a fight against Metal Sonic; and of course Black Doom would meet with an unimpressed black hedgehog.

“Shadow, the time of the ritual draws near; collect the Chaos Emeralds and-”

“Earth doesn’t need any solicitors, missionaries or terrorists today, thanks and rudely fuck off.”

Then one has to consider how his dynamic with Gerald might be affected by a few extra decades and the benefit of hindsight, especially alongside a Maria who survived to walk the Earth with him.

Well, that’s where my mind goes.