#since he can morph into a squid it’s safe to assume the black arms are similar to cephalopods

[soullessjack]

ill be honest i think i like the idea of shadow being Something that doesn’t even qualify as a hedgehog on any level besides appearance, more than i like him being an actual hedgehog. like..

“looking like a hedgehog” ? “unassuming form” ?

like he was literally just planned as ‘The Ultimate Life-form,’ without an actual form in mind. a giant eyeless salamander from an entirely separate branch of animal family is his predecessor. shadow being a hedgehog is at best, pure coincidence (and definitely for the sake of The Hedgehog being the titular/most popular/most marketable surname in the franchise), and at second-best, a result of Gerald being inspired by the Super Sonic mural (which is just a fan theory & frankly not very interesting) —

so I think it’s both funnier and way more interesting for him to be, like, Black Doom’s little alien homunculus flesh puppet that his (its?) soul will transfer into at the event of his (its?) death which is pretty close to what the end goal was in generations actually. and that’s not even touching the mutations ; something that meets no actual qualifications for a hedgehog as a mammal — side note, Black Doom is definitely not mammalian or any alien equivalent to the class, so jot that down — but it’s just easier to call him hedgehog since that’s what he looks like.

shadow is a hedgehog in quotation marks.

a vaguely-hedgehog-shaped thing, if you will.