sonic and eggman are kind of like, elemental forces that represent ideas. they won’t change because they can’t change, let alone tell a dynamic story by themselves. instead, their presence acts like walls for other characters to bounce off of. pretty much all of the interesting sonic stories either involve sonic helping someone else through their own arc or him just kinda being along for the ride. and this is why when there’s a story select in a game and sonic has his own story it’s usually kinda just… the most nothing out of all of them? since it’s usually just “eggman’s doing something, we gotta stop him” with little more substance than that, because it’s very hard to give that more substance on its own.
basically my point is sonic needs his stupid friends so they can give his life meaning and vice versa
im not even insinuating heavyhanded sonic adventure type shit (which i do personally love) as much as like. sonic 1 had basically no story, right? that’s fine, but then sonic 2 happens and you get tails and suddenly you have an entire character that has an arc and a little plot happens where he goes on a little adventure and in the ending he does something on his own to save the hero and it’s much more interesting already!
then beyond the classic era we have blaze with sonic rush, marine with sonic rush adventure, chip with sonic unleashed, and even today we have trip with sonic superstars
so like, it doesn’t have to be anything fancy, y’know?
Yeah I totally agree with this perspective. Flat characters aren't inherently bad and any sort of long-running series that doesn't change protagonists more or less falls into this style of storytelling.
I think the Sonic series got disproportionately criticized for this for a few years due to a combination of:
- frustration at the games failing to adapt to rapidly changing standards in the medium due to Sega's financial troubles and poor management
- longtime fans struggling to grapple with the fact that they aged out of the series' demographic
- internet comedians' famous love of ableism and punching down on children (deviantart recolors, [your name] the hedgehog, etc.)
At the risk of taking the ball and running in a different direction, I think there's also an element of creativity and childhood play that people want to put in a box as somehow beneath them, a demand that more serious stories and that characters be given more depth for a market that is aging / has already aged out of the target demographic to still feel like they're being catered to.
Maybe it's the shift from toyetic marketing in the 80s and 90s to the Marvel Movie-fication of media over the last nearly two decades, but I do think we've seen the media landscape shift from relatively simple blorbos with simple ideals that can easily be filled in with our own imaginations, to having every single detail about a character's story need to be filled in for the audience to imagine them as a fully realized character, because audiences are not trusted to think for themselves.
That also combines with the ever-present hum of social media and the inherent push for growth and engagement, which I think has shaped a lot of conversations around these topics and, with the need for everything to be explained, has kind of synthesized into this need for a "correct" reading of a character, their story, their motivations, their back story, and more.
The closest we ever got, and probably ever will get, to Sonic having deeper characterization (Edit: in the games specifically, not counting external media like the comics, movies, etc.) was the first Sonic Adventure, and his entire personality is laid out in his theme music. And, being personal for a minute, as a kid with a Dreamcast who was only just entering his teens, that shit rocked. My read was, become ungovernable, live your life as you want to, do what you think is right. Morality is what you decide for yourself. You're free to choose your path in life.
Sonic has a moral compass and a moral code, but it's not one in service to anyone but himself. There's beauty in that freedom, one that allows other characters to stand-in for different stories and character traits while leaving Sonic to be free, a slate to project on to, something that has clearly been successful for all the reasons listed above. It's easy to oversimplify Sonic into "radical" and "90's 'tude", but there's clearly something that has broader appeal and has kept Sonic feeling fresh for generations when you compare Sonic to most other mascots from around the same time.
I think, as people age and take on more responsibility, it's easy for them to become jaded to those values that Sonic represents and look at those things as childish and juvenile, a form of infinite possibilities and endless play that needs to be compressed, put away, and replaced by hard explanations and responsibilities to reflect one's own life.
This, uh, went on way longer than I expected it to, and I don't have a good ending sentence for it. So I'll just wrap up on Sonic OCs and Sonic Friends being a form of expression that we should cherish, and anyone who's down on them can cram it.