#spud's inbox

[ninjapotatohead]

Pontaff are GONE, at the very least you should be thankful for their influence being diminished.

Except I'm not thankful for anything that came about because they left. I have no reason to be.

I'm not thankful for the people who treated them (and Iizuka) like subhuman purely because of their writing or overall presence in the franchise not being what the fans delude themselves into thinking the franchise "should be".

I'm not thankful for the pitiful members of this fandom for sending them literal threats of violence to the point of them literally fearing for their lives.

I'm not thankful for how egregiously poor quality the officially licensed encyclopedia for the entire franchise turned out.

I'm not thankful for the inflated egos of the folks involved with a comic run by a publishing company that is literally bleeding money.

I'm not thankful for the hive-minded and whingy fans permeating pretty much any and all discussion about the franchise, let alone them being so desperate for Sonic Frontiers to win a damned awards show that they resort to slitting their wrists and sending photos to the host of the event.

I'm not thankful for the franchise turning out even more meta than the supposed "Meta Era" only for the fans to eat it up despite their previous claims of not liking the franchise being tongue-in-cheek (even though the franchise was always tongue-in-cheek)

I'm not thankful for the mediocre slog that is Sonic Prime getting greenlit.

I'm not thankful for the voice actors getting harassed and shoved around by stupid fans who know nothing about the voice acting industry OR the craft itself when (most of them) have done nothing wrong.

And why SHOULD I be?

[ninjapotatohead]

It gets me people thought Shadow can ask other Sonic chars about his past when his game came out

What, that he committed war crimes out of misled revenge? It doesn't really address anything. Nor did they personally witness the massacre 50 years ago

For whether he's the original or not, Rouge doesn't know, Omega is just "yeah there might be the OG to ref, but I dunno", no one else even is aware of the androids, and Shadow literally sees the Shad Androids after the Egg Albatross fight smashed. He literally won't learn anything besides "oh no, I might be fake"

The only person he can learn shit from is Eggman, but uh, good luck there, that evil dipshit isn't gonna squeal. He didn't in the endings. Even in Last Story it's a last minute ultimatum of dying strictly to motivate Shadow. And it's a verrrry delayed Easter egg

The fandom weirdly acts like it's no biggie to get answers entirely cuz they ignore that meta does not mean that other chars automatically will know shit

Same for weirdly ignoring he moved on. I've seen people deadass say he should've time traveled in 06 to save Maria. Like why, Mephiles is the way bigger priority, regardless how sloppy he's handled

I blame X's dumbass way of handling the amnesia. Literally made "Maria" a trigger word

And no, 4Kids didn't BS this scene, it's straight up that memetic

People really out here forgetting that the only people that know anything about Shadow's past and the reason for his creation... don't actually have the best intentions, to put it mildly.

• Dr. Eggman? Like you said, he knows, but he'd sooner take it to the grave than just politely tell Shadow anything (unless Shadow helps Eggman somehow).

• Black Doom? Also, not a reliable narrator. The dude holds the idea of giving the answers that Shadow is chasing like a carrot on a stick, and even then, only delivers in the form of half-truths; all to essentially coax him into giving him the Chaos Emeralds.

• The GUN Commander? That man's the textbook definition of "Revenge Before Reason." He hates Shadow's fucking guts because he blames him for GUN (the very organization that he's apparently in charge of) raiding the ARK one fateful day; so much so that he was perfectly willing to use Shadow as a scapegoat, and even thought that using a regular ass pistol against a speedy talking hedgehog was a good idea.

Yeah, it's not as simple as "just ask ANYONE ELSE"

[ninjapotatohead]

https://x.com/Blueknight_V2/status/1803927166083829937 https://x.com/The14thDemon/status/1803619577596629442

daniel barnes rt this, what the hell?

How long were these people asleep at the wheel when literally every Sonic writer not named "Shiro Maekawa" was getting the same kind of unwarranted flak?

[ninjapotatohead]

I’m sorry, what the FUCK do you mean sonic fans slit their wrists to Geoff for frontiers to win an award?! Is that real?! Source?!?

Wasn't Geoff who responded to it, but yeah, people associated with him and anyone in charge of the game awards were treated to at least one Sonic fan who was so desperate for Frontiers to win the 2022 Game Awards show (and was apparently so butthurt about it NOT winning).

[ninjapotatohead]

People: waaahhh pontac was a meanie

He didn't even say anything that bad!

Exactly!

He was much more cordial and level-headed than people give him credit for... unlike Evan Stanley

[ninjapotatohead]

I'm one of the people that wanted to give flynn a chance after being sick and tired of the shit Pontac wrote. Flynn blew it too, my question is why are so many people complaning about Sonic's current mediocrity and not jumping ship to a better franchise all together? Why are people hurting themselves lmao

Believe it or not, while I was in no way bothered by Pontaff's tenure on the series (due in no small part to having accepted the fact that Sonic storytelling has always been wonky-at-best), I was looking forward to seeing what Ian had to bring to the table.

And, while you could never pay me to give enough of a shit about the Archie comics to read all 290 issues front-to-back, I used to be in full support of the IDWverse back when it was new. Any real gripes I had with it at the time was stuff I was more than willing to look past, since I figured I could excuse a few oddities if the comic is doing its own thing separately from the games...

But then, Issue #12 happened, the Zombot Virus arc went on for WAY too long, characters acted less and less like themselves, the writing felt so tongue-in-cheek that it made Lego Dimensions shake its head in disappointment, every critique of Ian's questionable writing decisions were either deflected or just half-heartedly addressed, IDW Publishing started bleeding money, and it overall just felt like a slow and grueling death by a thousand paper cuts.

Oh right, and the Sonic Encyclospeedia being of such shit quality didn't help either.

So yeah, is it any wonder why I (and others) lacked confidence that Frontiers' plot would be of any substance when it was announced Ian was tasked with writing it, especially given his track record?

[ninjapotatohead]

Ian writes Eggman exactly like Eggman Nega. No wonder he thinks there aren’t any differences between them.

Pretty much, yeah.

And it's hilarious to think about too, considering that Ian once said that N'Eggman was of his least favorite character in the series (up there with Chris Thorndyke) to the point where he was not only glad he never got to write him during Archie's run, but (along with Iizuka) was adamant that N'Eggman was fuckin' dead and isn't coming back to the series' canon.

Yet, when you take a look at how dumb all of N'Eggman's plans are and compare that to how butchered Eggman himself was in the Zombot arc, you'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference between them.

[ninjapotatohead]

Take this advice anyway you will but maybe you guys should stop engaging with other fans or react to some stranger posting on Twitter, who you disagree with it. It never really goes anywhere and it ends up making you guys look bad. Especially when you engage with minors about this shit. It's not what me and others want to see on their feed.

[ninjapotatohead]

https://twitter.com/Danny8bit/status/1791189023769461233

Why do they want Shadow to be a neutral hero like Meta Knight instead of a rival every time?

Because Sonic fans don't want an accurate depiction of Shadow The Hedgehog; they want their own headcanons and misguided analyses to be made manifest. See also, the TailsTube discourse.

[ninjapotatohead]

Let's say you were taken back in time to redo Sonic Prime. You have to keep the same theme (Sonic in multiverses where he never existed, has to remake his reality) but aside from that you have a relatively large amount of leeway to do what you want, keeping things in a TV format of course. What is your plotline through the series and the character arcs you'd do?

Well, obviously, make Sonic... well, not a childish jackass. Lol

But as far as what else I'd do or what direction I'd take the show? Well...

• While I'd still have the Paradox Prism shatter in the ensuing battle between Sonic and Eggman (it is the inciting incident after all), I would instead have Sonic breaking it be an accident; having it shatter as a side effect of him and Eggman fighting over it.

• I'd also downsize the Chaos Council immensely, mainly because it never made sense to me why Sonic's friends had Shatterverse counterparts in each dimension, but all of Eggman's are just confined to New Yoke. You know, make it so that each Shatterspace has an Eggman to go with it as well. This may tie into my next point, but I'd have the Chaos Council start off with just one version of Eggman, and MAYBE have the other hypothetical Shatterverse Eggmen come together and join forces so they become the big bad later in the show. I always found Nine uninteresting as the main antagonist of the entire show, tbh

• If I were absolutely required to keep the narrative theme of Sonic learning to value his friends a bit more, I guess I would run with the idea of each of the Shatterspaces having a version of one of the main cast as its antagonist, so that if and when Sonic goes to get a better understanding of their problems, he's one step closer to understanding the friends he has back in his home world. And I think the show was going that route initially (Thorn Rose for the Boscage Maze, Dread Knux for No Place, Nine Tails for New Yoke), but I feel they didn't really go all the way with that concept; I mean, there aren't even Shatterspaces where a version of Rouge or Big are the antagonists, so I'd also formulate new Shatterspaces centered around them and what problems they might have.

• Shadow, for the most part, I'd keep unchanged. However, I'd change his and Sonic's conflict to revolving around something else entirely (since I'd be rewriting Sonic's character here).

• I would stay true to Sonic's character and have him realize through the time he's spent in the Shatterverse that the Shatterspace counterparts of his friends... simply aren't the friends he has back home; sure, they may functionally be manifestations of the sort of internal struggles and various problems they themselves face, but they're ultimately completely different people (complete with their own personalities and wildly different histories).

That's about all I can think of off the top of my head.

[ninjapotatohead]

Man, i wish Sonic team didnt give a crap of what sonic fans say, now they ruined Amy and Shadow

You say that as if things like Sonic Chronicles didn't already do that.

[ninjapotatohead]

sorry but Pontac (if that's him) was super rude in that image

Nah, he wasn't. After all the shit he and Graff had to put up with from this fandom, it's absolutely 100% justified.

[ninjapotatohead]

This guy thinks I need to apologize for ... *checks notes* wishing that the stalker who harasses me and my friends on the regular on a website most of us aren't even on, lie to just about anyone who listens to his constant shit-flinging, and pretends that he isn't all the anons that hasn't sent me and my friends to die.

Gee, I wonder why I want a person like that to die. It surely can't have been all the stalking, the harassment, and the inability to connect with ANYONE outside of my social circle thanks to said asshole and his constant need to lie... all because I shat on SAGE as she's written in Frontiers. Seriously. That idiot's so butthurt his waifu got insulted by me he's made it a vendetta to constantly stalk me and publicly shame me for anything creative, including mocking my OC Ovi and calling my idea of fusing Sonic and Ovi 'disgusting'.

Cowards, the lot of them

[ninjapotatohead]

Pontac doesn't have the right to stoop to that level and then play victim.

Yes he does

[ninjapotatohead]

(different anon) I don't think anon understand what termination mean when talking about Pontaff like I'm pretty sure they just don't renew contract or something like that.

A termination is a fancy way of saying fired and I doubt Pontaff did anything that could breach NDA prior 2020

Also, Pontaff had nothing to do with the quality of the games they were involved in. After all, Sonic 06 still sucked and SEGA still haven't truly recovered from that game's failure.

[ninjapotatohead]

Sonic fans tell us to move on from Ian Flynn, yet they refuse to move on from Pontac and Graff years after they jumped ship.

I know, it's simultaneously hilarious and kinda sad.

They go on about not settling for mediocrity, yet they're always salivating over what's basically still mediocrity.