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The True Legend of Tails Prower (2014)

5 min read

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2020-05-31

i wanna find the comic i read once where the group has ptsd from the chemical plant and sonic is trans masc and sonic and tails were best friends but sonic has become more and more of a distant asshole the more the group idolizes him as a hero and tails is also trans but ppl keep deadnaming tails and basically the entire group dynamic is nestled firmly in the ruins of messy intimate relationships a few of them had with each other

i guess i have extremely specific opinions about this, by virtue of me now having a very specific characterization of tails. so we’re basically doing the same thing, complete with commitments regarding how we treat the source text.

it’s interesting how she goes pretty deep into specific citations for the objects in her world, and is able to back everything up with a specific reference to the object presented – whether it existed in the games, in the comic, or in the fanart. the presentation treats all of these elements as first-order parts of the universe, and the only incongruity comes with the preconceptions we bring to the table ourselves. who’s to say that rouge’s family (as shown on deviantart) isn’t relevant to this universe? and these specifics make it feel like a labor of love by someone who has been immersed in the fandom for a while.

although a consequence of this is that all elements of these products – even the non-diagetic ones – are very real and very present. the zones are real. the chao garden is real. the main menu is real. and that feels really uncanny to me, but if you’re going all in then it makes sense for these to be universe-relevant too.

but also there are a lot of distinct porp-isms: the specific ptsd, the sentence fragments, the WindMillBackPacks… also, despite being written in 2016, the writing is very tied to gotta-go-fsat culture (like in the “faster” navigation buttons). maybe this meme should be a first-order object too, but it’s still a meme you need to swallow.

characterization parallels:

  • transfem tails, obvi. (though we differ in how far along she is) (though it seems she’s still closeted) (poor thing)
  • aged-up tails, although it’s difficult to discern how much age matters in her story. i see tails being 32 as meant to represent that she’s washed up, injured, lost too many friends, and is trying to just get by in her meager life. whereas i have tails at 22 because that’s as good an age as any for realizing that none of your childhood dreams are going to come to fruition.
    • (oh! tails is 32 because this was released in 2016 and tails was eight in 1992)
  • tails who can’t really fly, though hers is from injury and mine is from puberty.
  • traumatized tails, for many of the same reasons.
  • neurodivergent tails, to some degree. she writes it out as extremely visible, i mostly just have her as socially oblivious.
    • maybe this ties into how we treat her intelligence too. porp’s reading leans closer to tails being a savant type, whereas i just see her as a gifted kid who had a big storm comin’.
  • we both kinda treat sonic as kind of a specter, who hangs over everyone by virtue of what he did to them all in the past.
  • tails living in a small apartment.

we might differ most obviously in how we treat the world. i try to ignore that there was ever a chemical plant (zone), or that they collected rings, or that they had lives. maybe i instead hold the position that the games were fanciful representations of what actually took place.

i think i’m indebted to sonic boom in this regard, and the way in which it placed everyday life at the forefront. so sure, while there was robot battle action on occasion, it was still grounded in the language that the rest of the show set up for character interaction. except i’m just taking the extra step of removing the robot battle action entirely, and using boom’s existence as a fallback justification that, if these battles did happen, they probably would’ve went like this. but that’s irrelevant to the story i want to tell, so they might’ve just been playing imagination games for all i care.

whereas porpentine takes the approach that the environment caused a lot of her traumas. the chemicals were too corrosive, the chaos emeralds give ptsd, the loop de loop was too fast and too hard. so the only way she can get away with this is to have a world full of concrete objects for the characters to react to. it’s a decision that’s neither better nor worse than my own, and it fits the story she’s trying to tell.

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