#these footnotes are all over the place btw its just throwing some thoughts out there. not really contributing to my main point

[twipsai]

^this is me when someone respectfully disagrees with me btw

ANYWAYS! pls dont take this as me arguing in a mean way or anything, i love Sonic a lot!!! and i like talking about it and i think you bring up a lot of interesting points!!!! so im gonna go over it all in maybe a not super cohesive way???

i wanna start by acknowledging what you said at the start, "the wording of the second bolded point echoes IDW Sonic's wording of his principles in IDW #2 that Amy swoons over" and clarifying that i was referencing It Doesn't Matter from sa1 and sa2,,, (the full lyric is "Don't ask me why; I don't need a reason / I got my way, my own way!), and the reason why i alluded to it is because i was trying to make that connection that Sonic still has the same basic principals that he did during the adventure era, but i guess i wasnt clear enough oops ^^; i honestly completely forgot that theres a reference to that lyric in idw #2 but,, uh, happy accident i guess?

ok now onto my actual thoughts

i actually wanna agree with you on that first part, cuz as i think about it its something that makes a lot of sense and i havent really been able to fully wrap my head around it -- Sonic being reactive to whats in front of him is exactly how he is!!! idk how i didnt realize that before lol

as to what you said to my first point, i think that theres a level of dissonance between the games and comics with the threats theyre dealing with, and it kinda prevents me from explaining myself with examples. this MIGHT be a reach!!!! im sorry if it is BUT im gonna compare satbk and frontiers for a sec, since we're talking about satbk a lot here (as we should. its such a good game)

(and im not sure if youre lumping in Sonic in IDW with Sonic in Frontiers? a lot of people do but. idk maybe you dont lol. for the purposes of my point i will)

i think that there are parallels to be drawn between how Sonic treats Merlina and Sage, vs how he treats King Arthur and The End. he has a lot of patience for Merlina and Sage as he realizes theres a lot more to them besides just wanting to kill him, but he'll still take what they throw at him like he takes anything else. then you compare that to Arthur and The End, and Sonic is like. ready to destroy those guys. and i think that, while Sonic is first and foremost just living in the moment and reacting to what people throw at him, i also think that theres a huge difference between when Sonic is fighting a person and when Sonic is fighting a powerful entity. granted, he didnt know that King Arthur was an illusion, but he did know he was an immortal tyrant associated with hell. i mean. the underworld

i would love to use an example from the comics showing how he does treat similar scaled threats the same way but i. cant! because he doesnt face threats like that in IDW! hes dealing with things like "the dragon is back" and "that girl has psychological issues". the only thing that comes close to the world-ending threat that we see in the games is the metal virus, and it was both a lot more complicated than typical "defeat the bad guy, save the world" that we see in the games. now, that does NOT mean i dont think the games have complex stories but if i delved into every situation Sonic has been put in then we would be here for so long. and i dont wanna do that. so yeag.

basically to sum up my points above, im saying that the reason IDW Sonic has been pretty lax with his enemies, and even tries to help some of them, is because theyre not really the same level of threats as most of the villains he faces in the games. he can deal with them fine without ending them outright, so he doesnt really have an issue with letting them live. hes just kind of easy-going and chill like that. at least thats how i see it, maybe im missing something?

also, to your point that "Sonic doesnt fight for freedom, he fights against oppression" i just. do not agree lol. i mean, hes been associated with the Freedom Fighters since 1993, but theres also some more direct reference to it in reference to specifically Sonic

the Sonic Adventure Stylebook, page 9 (translated) - "He loves freedom and hates crookedness. He is impulsive and short-tempered, but also has a kindness that can't be ignored when someone is in trouble."

Sonic the Hedgehog Encyclo-speed-ia, page 13 - "Sonic is usually laid back and cool, but he's driven to fight injustice - not in the name of the law, but for the ideal of freedom."

and then i WAS going to add more examples, but the wayback machine is down right now so. can i just say source: trust me? sorry i wish i could add more examples :( i dont wanna dwell on this "for freedom or against oppression" point too much though, cuz i honestly think its just kinda arguing semantics. as well as the fact that i feel like both things are true, i just kinda didnt phrase it well in my original post

um. and now i kinda wanna go completely off the rails so please be nice to me but im gonna say something that may be controversial,,, i am of the mind that, because IDW is canon material, then it shouldnt be seen as a different character than how Sonic was written in some earlier games, even if it seems like it. because its just as much as source material as anything else! i really just think that most "out of character" things are more akin to different facets of a character. i think that writing off all of Sonic in IDW because some things he does contradicts what he does in the games is just kinda. idk. i dont like how quick people are to do that. i mean like, i got into Sonic because of IDW, and then i went and played the games and it never really felt any different to me -- just Sonic responding different to different situations. maybe i need to do another read through of IDW! but i really dont think that writing off an entire canon comic series is a good thing to do when looking at the facets of a character's personality. that could just be me

anyways ummmmm yeah i dont really have anything else to say? i dont disagree with everything you said, but there are some things that i dont think are quite right,,, hopefully this all makes more sense than my original post cuz i dont think i did a good job articulating my points

um. idk what else to add. bye bye i hope you at least liked my drawing of a super sad alien

"sonic just wants to be best friends with his enemies"

WRONG thats only in the idw comics. extremely loud incorrect buzzer.

[my-deer-friend]

Hi OP!

Your taste and mine are quite different - and in the spirit of your invitation (as well as to work through my own thoughts), here is my counterpoint.

I think the distinction between our preferences might just be a definitional - historical fiction, versus what I think you're describing, which is a spectrum of history-flavoured... spec-fic? Fantasy? This is not a value judgement. I love all of these genres. I just think historical fiction itself is quite a specific thing, and a much narrower category than it's made out to be - not just "all fiction set back then".

In my view, the purpose of historical fiction is to realistically portray and explore a distinct historical time and place. This goes beyond just evoking the setting, and this requires a healthy degree of research, because a realistic portrayal needs the writer to have knowledge of the social, political, cultural and physical circumstances that the characters live in.

(We're not talking about 100% historically accurate, btw, which is impossible anyway.)

Now of course we could quibble endlessly about where the line for "realistic" even is, and how that can or should come across in everything from the social attitudes to the spices on the rack. (Though - as an aside - you can trust your readers enough to throw in a mention of mace or cardamom without feeling the need to footnote or explain it! Incidental details like that make for a richer world, delight readers who are familiar with the context, and can even fuel the narrative.)

For me, it comes down to purpose.

Because... why would you set a story in a real-world historical context, if not to take advantage of that specific setting's narrative potential and uniqueness? (Doing that effectively requires a non-trivial amount of research. That's hard work.)

And if you don't particularly care about all the nuances that make up a specific place and time? If all you're interested in is one extracted historical detail - the hot air ballooning craze of the 1780s or frock coats or whatever? Then just extract it and have fun creating your own non-historical world.

You don't need to change anything about how much research you're (not) doing - just reframe the genre you're operating in. Take Bridgerton. (I love Bridgerton). It keeps what it wants from history and discards the rest and fills in some fun new things. It's unashamedly history-flavoured fantasy. It's not historical fiction. It's fine that it's not! They couldn't tell the story they want to tell in the way they want to tell if if they were forced to use an entirely realistic Regency setting.

And being clear on your genre attracts the right readers too. A novel that might delight you despite its historical anachronisms would frustrate me no end. Victor Hugo's pages-long descriptions of Parisian sewers are either the best or worst thing you've ever read.

Write what you want forever! Do as much or as little research as you want! And then just give the final product a fitting label so that everyone understands what the goal is (and isn't).

As for the problem of over-explaining? That's just poorly executed writing, authors getting carried away by details instead of remembering that the story itself is at the heart of the written work. The solution for that is not to do less research for historical fiction, but to learn to better incorporate the research that has been done. I'm my experience, under-researching is much more prevalent a problem for works specifically billing themselves as historically accurate.

Re: Historical accuracy in fiction

Tl;dr: it is not your job as a fiction author to provide complete historical accuracy. It is your job to evoke a time period and communicate it. Don't get bogged down in research unless you really want to.

First of all, this is my disclaimer: I am talking about the kind of things I like to read and write. I am speaking as a historical fiction fan, author and lover of history. This is my personal taste.

Perfect historical accuracy in fiction is massively overrated. In the past have gotten stuck on writing historical fiction pieces because I felt I needed to research more. This killed my story. The piece of art that could have been amazing sat languishing on a hard drive forever.

I do not think historical fiction needs to be stunningly accurate. In fact, it's easy to see when an author has clearly over-researched their book: it reads like a history text that talks about topics your average person would have never even thought about.

Example:

What an author I read recently thought a 1st century Roman citizen would think about: Ah yes, I remember the British campaign like it was yesterday, even though it was ten years ago, in AD 61. Nero was emperor then....etc.

Me, when I think about something that happened 10 years ago: Shit, that was 10 years ago? Wait, was David Cameron PM then?

(And I know how to read and use Google.)

I'm not saying "don't research the time period you are writing in". I'm saying "research the time period you are writing in as much as you feel like doing, then forget most of it when you get in your character's head, except for what might be meaningful for them".

It is not necessarily the purpose of historical fiction to give readers a detailed and realistic version of the time period. All you really need to give them is the vibes that make them feel as though they're in that time.

I just saw a post that explained how Medieval Europeans had access to spices we might usually associate with Indian cuisine. But is that what people would expect to see in a story set in Medieval Europe? No, and you don't get to put in a little "um, actually" author's note explaining every little detail that feels incongruous but is "technically" accurate. It just feels incongruous.

However, am I going to give my Indian character who lives in London in the 1930s access to curry spices? Yes, because he'd look high and low for them and I bet he'd find a good grocer somewhere in London at that time. I haven't researched how realistic that is, and I don't really care. It will still feel in-touch with the setting, and that's all I care about.

Ever since I gave up on perfect historical accuracy, I have written so many more stories in historical settings, and I love the hell out of them. Would a Louisiana jazz band tour in the UK in 1923? Maybe. But I am definitely putting a Louisiana jazz band in my novel set in the UK in 1923 because people want to see jazz in the jazz-age novel! And so do I!

The key thing is, I've only done the level of research that I'm interested in, enough to get me comfortably embedded in the time.

The fiction author's job is to deliver on the promise of the premise. Don't get caught up accidentally writing non-fiction!

You don't have to "put in your research" to write a historical novel. You get to put in as much research as you want to, and you get to disregard the stuff that doesn't spark joy, because it's your story.

I'd love to talk about this more. Historical fiction fans, what's your taste? Have you ever read anything that felt over-researched, or anything that was under-researched to the point of taking you out of the immersion? Let me know.