recently learned that the IDW sonic the hedgehog tie-in comics have some pretty stringent licensing requirements, which includes a No Relationships moratorium. and not like, a functional Hets Only thing, just no relationships at all. even the Pink Girl Character from 1993 whose predominant character trait for thirty years has been obsession with the fucked up blue creature just doesn't address that anymore.
the closest they get is two comics-original girl characters, tangle and whisper, who met and had an early miniseries together and frequent emotional beats with each other and an actual printed page where the color layout puts an impressionist lesbian flag in the background of a panel where they are the only two characters, and the lead writer does a podcast where he clarifies stuff where he said "based on sega's restrictions they are best friends, get it"
and like, that's not good, that that has to happen. but it is pretty funny
This is actually a Mandate From Up On High that's been here for YEARS now, and the reason is really fucking dumb, as all sonic fandom stuff really is, when you boil it down.
So, the Sonic Archie Comics really loved to tease the shippers. They had Sonic x Sally as a big thing, but then they also teased Sonic x Amy a lot. And they introduced a third character, Mina Mongoose, cause they were like "Hey people like this love triangle thing, let's make it more!"
This proved to be a mistake. After one particular ship-heavy issue, one of the Archie artists and writers got sent DEATH THREATS over it, and those death threats also made it to Sega of America and Sega of Japan, who looked up from not paying Archie any attention and were like "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING WHY ARE WE GETTING DEATH THREATS OVER THIS"
Literally two decades later, and they apparently think Sonic fans cannot be trusted with shipping. Maybe they're right! I DO ship Tangle and Whisper because uh, of fucking course they're dating. It'll just be another situation of Sally and Nicole where the writers are like "Yes, they're gay, but shh, they're not gay". I take what I can get.
There's a fun parallel here with the Fleetway UK Sonic the Comic canon, where one of the writers really took off with writing Amy and a Fleetway original character, Tekno the Canary. They ended up going on time-space adventures, Amy started wearing cargo pants and dressing like a baby butch in high school, and eventually they canonized Amy Rose/Tekno the Canary,
In the offshoot alternate canon of the fleetway comics.
The Sonic children yearn for the canon lesbians.
