🍸

For years I couldn't articulate why the idea of Shadow "moving on", getting accepted into Sonic's friend group, being loved despite the damage, felt wrong. It's because it's so fake. Sickeningly gut-churningly fake. Shadow's coldness, while genuine, is also load-bearing. There's something enormous behind it, something he would die for. People like him who let it out do not receive love. They get staring, or disgust at the show of vulnerability. Maybe if they're lucky they get people who make those soft sad little sympathy noises or offer surface-level platitudes because that's just what you're "supposed to do" when someone is sad in your vicinity. But it doesn't come with any real understanding, and when they decide you've stopped being useful or interesting or convenient to them, they take that soft thing and put it through your ribs. They aim for the soul because they know exactly where it is now, and it could only ever be your fault for letting it out. That's for someone human and ordinary who might struggle in life. Shadow has millions who hate him on sight, on principle, for existing. What shippers or found family fans tend to do with Shadow does not belong in a story as authentic as his - not because he doesn't deserve it - far from it - but because it's injecting a lie directly into truth. The "I can fix him" people have either never been broken or know they are and needs the reversal to be possible so badly they'll die defending it. They'll call it character development and say the vilest thing you've ever heard straight to your face right after, things they thought about before saying. Those are the same people who say they'd accept Shadow. No, they cannot look at Shadow at all because it's like looking at a wound walking around, and it makes them feel uncomfortable. I love Shadow, but I hate watching people applaud a fictional act of grace they will never once extend to anything living. I think the wound is pretty, and I'd rather see a soul strong enough to keep walking with a hole in it than watch people put a Hello Kitty band-aid over it, as if that's a story. #ShadowtheHedgehog Art by Sonic Team (Yui Karasuno).

Shadow opened his eyes in a cold metal room. The first thing he saw was a girl looking at him with warm kind eyes. His blood is supposed to be the solution to her dying body, and it does not work. The hypothesis that justified his existence is disproven by his existence, but he remains conscious afterward watching that disproof happen to the only person who has ever looked at him and seen a soul. Ordinary failures are things you have, they are not what you are. Not so for Shadow. Gerald built a creature with a heart, then put that creature beside a dying girl in a sealed station orbiting a world that would fear it. He was fully aware of the pain he was causing by creating Shadow, yet his cruelty was still born from a place of love. Maria had every reason to view him as the failed experiment he technically was, and didn't. She loved him anyway. The memory of having once been loved without condition is the reason Shadow does not destroy the world that keeps punishing him for being alive. Without it Shadow's will would have nowhere to go except inward into self-erasure or outward into destruction. Gerald suppressing Shadow's memories of Maria in SA2 proved that. Gerald sinned twice over. He saw Emerl, an ancient weapon built to destroy, and decided it should have a heart. Emerl loved the way someone loves when no one has ever taught them to be afraid. He learned to love because he was shown love. But the world still used and broke Emerl, and in the end someone who cared for him had to end his life. When Emerl asks Shadow if he should be glad that he was born, what he was really asking is whether the ability to love was worth the agony it can create. One of the main ethical problems with creating artificial life, to me, isn't that it will kill us or replace us. Rather, it is that we might build something that loves perfectly and more purely than we are capable of loving in return. And then we will spend its existence telling it, calmly and with great reasoning, that what it feels does not count. Do not create a mind with the ability to love unless you have first built a world willing to love it back.

So, time to drop this on anyone who cares about Sonic lore. Ian Flynn canonized a made-up fan term for Maria's illness, which ended up overwriting the real-life disorder she was supposed to have. Maria actually had 先天性免疫不全症候群 —, or Primary Immunodeficiency Syndrome. It's a real genetic disorder. The term is right there, in Rouge's report "The Truth of 50 Years Ago," after "NIDS." NIDS was always an abbreviation that didn't stand for anything until fans, and later Archie, filled it in. "Neuro-immunodeficiency Disorder" is a nonexistent illness. After Archie, it was used in Sonic Chronicles (explicitly non-canon), and later Ian's Encyclospeedia. Ian finally had Shadow Generations say Maria "contracted" "Neuro-immunodeficiency Disorder" as a kid, solidifying it as "canon". Maekawa already confirmed the intent was that Maria lived on the ARK to stay away from Earth's pathogens. This is because Maria had a real autoimmune disorder she was born with, likely diagnosed as a baby. Now Maria has a made-up illness she contracted when she was old enough to remember Spagonia. Isn't that nice? #SonictheHedgehog #ShadowtheHedgehog

Sonic fans like to argue about Blaze's role in the franchise. They blame Silver or Sonic Team for the fact that she only seems to exist as Silver's wrangler. What they fail to realize is that this happens to every female character made to be independent and strong-willed. You'll notice that when people discuss power levels, they talk about Sonic, Shadow, and Silver, but not Blaze, despite her being on a similar level to them. Nobody even excludes her intentionally, they just write her off because she is female. Blaze was blessed with her very own "super" form, able to go head-to-head with Sonic and win, introduced in a decently well-liked game, bested Knuckles in one hit, ruler of an entire kingdom... quickly whittled down into a side character. Now, when Sonic fans see Blaze jogging alone, their interest isn't in her at all. Their interest is in imagining a male in the picture. "She's looking at a falling maple leaf in the background. She must be thinking of her undying adoration for Silver". Look at the number of people who think Rouge should be reduced to Shadow's therapist. She's been ripped away from her original role as Knuckles' rival. No longer is she truly untamable and free. She is Shadow's simp, even though he'll never reciprocate or even react to her flirting. Ian Flynn couldn't even get himself to acknowledge Rouge as strong because she flaunts her femaleness. He believes taking away femaleness is the only way for a woman to be "kick-butt". Look at all the art of Surge shyly blushing, submissive and delicate, her quills down to appear more feminine and soften her silhouette. She's a pretty little trophy girl, tamed not by force or reason, but simply by the presence of the lead male. This is explained away as character development, but what development? Rather, it is erasing aspects of her to fulfill the shipper's fantasies and passing it off as development. This is the fate that awaits every female character who is physically strong, emotionally assertive, or otherwise independent. Eventually, she is reduced to nothing more than a powerless damsel for the hero to claim and own. Her stubbornness is distorted into a cliché tsundereism, her hatred is twisted into sexual frustration, and her character is warped into an adorable accessory that nobody takes seriously. The shipper may or may not half-heartedly attempt to preserve remnants of her original personality, but they'll water it down so much that the man closest to her can effortlessly control her with a few words. You cannot even call it misogyny, because it is often women themselves who portray them like this. Female rivals or villains will never work in this franchise. It's not because of SEGA or because of any specific character. It's because of the people who claim to love them.