Rants, Vents, and Random Thoughts

RANT- Character Usage and Why I'm Not Into Sonic as Much as I was Before

Alrighty.

You're a Wattpad user- chances are you've created a lot of characters for your stories, or maybe not. Either way, you've most likely created distinct personalities for them, adventures to go on, ways they're shaken or destroyed emotionally, et cetera.

I'll tell you that since I've gotten into my first fandom (Sonic the Hedgehog), I've created a CRAPTON of fan characters and original characters. Most of those OCs (in which they are properly defined as such) haven't seen the light of day yet, but once I finish Transparency I'm gonna guess they will.

Enough with that, anyway- let's get onto those who have seen the light of day. If you frequent my DrawCast account, you might've been there in the limelight of the time when my Sonic FCs were hugely prevalent.

Let's take one of them -and for those who have come here on a whim, I'll give you a little introduction- let's take my first Sonic FC, Stella the Skunk. After her older sister lost her legs in the army, Stella has no friends because of how temperamental she is around people even lightly joking about death. Then, Stella meets a kid named Kano, who also has no friends because he's the "loser" of his foster home, with no connections whatsoever.

Eventually, Kano invites Stella onto a picnic on the roof deck of a building. This roof deck happens to be near the convention center, which is housing a old-time weapons convention. Kano holds an animosity towards this kind of stuff, so in his little picnic basket he packs tomatoes to punt at the building... with bombs hidden in them.

Now, back in the day, this seemed kind of like a good start to a story. Lots of tangents could've gone off of it- does Stella finally despise her friend? Does Kano slash Stella's eye open? Does Stella meet some new friends who tell her that everything's going to be ok?

I had the whole thing planned out in my head, I imagined that I would make a comic out of it, and I thought I was going to be revered. Hey, a teenager wrote this story. Boy howdy, not bad!

Frankly, despite all these strategies that I've had in my head, I've never had the audacity to put any of this onto paper and send it off to Fanfiction.Net or Wattpad or anywhere else. The reason being? It has crossed the line to boring me to death.

Part of this is being what has has happened recently with the series I'm writing for. Because of it, I haven't been having good feelings for the Sonic the Hedgehog series. For those who don't know, in the late 00s, SEGA hired a company known as Big Red Button to create a soft reboot video game of the series, known as Sonic Boom, and put it on the Wii, PS3, and Xbox 360.

But, along came the Wii U, and somehow, BRB had to transport the engine they were using  onto that console, essentially making them erase a lot of the content the original game had AND, ironically, downgrading a lot of the visuals of the game.

The result is Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric. Come February 2014, the first trailer debuts and most everyone is SUPER EXCITED about it. They think the game looks beautiful, they can finally play as someone other than Sonic, but... the footage shown was from PRIOR to the game being moved onto the Wii U. I'll give you three guesses as to what happens during E3 that June, when they see the actual footage, and two of them don't count.

Everyone was outraged. Drinking games were made for the unreleased game, YouTube comments hit an all time low for how brain-cell-killing they were, and those who actually worked on the game- looking at Mike Pollock (the voice of Eggman) and Stephen Frost (a marketing manager for the game)- were receiving belittlement and were thusly scared off by us fans.

There was even an article published during E3 on a fansite called The Sonic Stadium, titled, "In Defense of Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric" to mitigate the hate being spread around. That didn't make much traction. When it was finally released in November, SEGA refused to send review copies and, in short, the game was panned.

I saw all of this happen. Being one who had just figured out that the series was a joke to non-fans, I actually wanted a game that could impress everyone, and my conscious was KILLED when I saw all the crap this silly little game was getting. I tried to remain positive, I posted constructive comments on The Sonic Stadium every so often, I bought the game on opening day, and I did my best to complete the game.

Note my language, did my best. I only played the game twice and never finished it.

In short, pardon my obscenities, I came to realize the game was absolute SHITE.

Fortunately, the game wasn't the only part of the Sonic Boom series- a TV show was also released on Cartoon Network, and when the show executes well, it's actually not that bad.

Anyway, because of this whole debacle, SEGA released no new games last year except for a mobile title or two, and even delayed the next Sonic Boom game- Fire and Ice, for the 3DS- to this year.

Exacerbating my realization with Sonic Boom, I came to the inevitable epiphany that this year is the last chance that Sonic has to be good, being his anniversary and all, and based on how SEGA's been lately, my prospects are not positive at all. In October, I halted work on what Drawcasters might know as The Big Project- basically, a Sonic webcomic where zombies invade Sonic's world and he has a really big test of ego when he's captured and nearly killed by Eggman. And now, I might be stopping work on Stella's story, too, since it seems like there's no point in doing it anymore.

But it makes me feel really bad, dropping all this stuff. I've worked so much on giving Stella and friends a backstory, and all this world-building to Sonic's universe and Chaos Energy and all, and if the franchise dies, all that would go to waste.

It makes me feel even more ridiculous moving away from a fandom I really liked once, and seeing people today still loving things like the old Pokemon games and Crash Bandicoot, both of which can't really be updated, per se. I recall my mother seeing a talking Sonic action figure and pointing out on this fact, saying "you would've really been having a field day with this a year ago".

It's conflictual, though, with the fact that I've toyed with these things for a year, maybe even two, and I'm bored of it all. I like venturing into new things, improvisation- that life may not be as professional, per se, but it's more fun than knowing what you're going to do.

I guess, at the end of the day, it's a matter of maturity. It might be why I'm drawing a lot more Splatoon and Steven Universe art, as opposed to Sonic art. It could also be why I'm experimenting with different sexualities and races in my new leading characters, again, as opposed to my Sonic ones- only one, Nicky, had a differing sexuality (he was your typical cliched gay male character).

And chances are, I'm going to be getting into a lot more other things later on. I've finished reading the Japanese novel Battle Royale and fell in love with its characters, and recently I've been trying to get peeks at shows such as Adventure Time and Kill La Kill.

But only time will tell if this is a neverending cycle or not.

TL;DR: I feel bad for not using the characters I've invested so much time into, despite being tired of writing them, and I feel like I'm growing in terms of what I like and don't like. Also, Sonic had a really, really, really bad time in 2014. Just saying.