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kizamisok more ship bullshit.
i'm starting to not care as much that people ship shadaria/shadria because whatever. age her up if you must. but i have some... opinions about why i personally don't really ship it myself.
alright so for context for the rest of this, SEGA has removed the character ages as of like... 2024? so they no longer have CANON ages, but characters like tails, cream, and charmy, are still mostly regarded as children among the fandom. what of maria?
i personally do not care about human/mobian ships. (mobian is an archie/satAM term but the fandom still uses it to refer to the animal characters in universe because it's just easier to call them that. it is not a term canon to SEGA themselves). during sonic's concept stages, he had a human gf named madonna, so it's not like it's unheard of for this to mix. also in most animal-centric media, you always see human/animal relationships and that was never weird to me because it was cartoon logic. calling it bestiality is retarded tbh.
anyways, i personally like rouge/topaz. i don't mind sonic/elise.
so what's wrong with maria/shadow? why is this one "bad" but shadamy (amy, who was originally 12, and shadow who is ageless but built to be 15) is okay? in fact, how is sonadow okay when sonic was 15 and again, shadow is ageless but has existed 50 years more than sonic? it's because maria, who is canonically 12 according to sonic X...
...is also a human that is 12, that died at the age of 12. she can never age. amy, who was also 12 before SEGA removed their ages, is a mobian and can age. elise, 17, can age. topaz (adult), can age. the important thing is that they can canonically age. maria cannot. ever. but it's also important to me to make this human and mobian distinction between amy and maria specifically because that seems to be the biggest dichotomy of ship discourse about the two in regards to shadow specifically.
i don't care if people age up maria, go ahead. i never cared about the "aging up" a character discourse because we all did that as kids when we wanted to see what their faves would look like grown up. i don't see it any different doing it as adults and i especially don't care what your nefarious reasons for doing it are. my problem is shipping her with shadow as she is. she is a human that can't age. amy is a mobian, like shadow, that can age. that is my biggest issue with it. i'm also in the minority that doesn't see them as siblings either. most anti-shadria shippers cope by seeing them as siblings because in the shadow the hedgehog 2005 guidebook, it says maria and shadow have a "sibling-like" relationship in english AND japanese >>
so why so much discourse? as far as i know, this was the first "canon" inference of the two being like siblings. before that, maria was simple called his "best friend". shadow exists as a cure to maria's illness which is specific to the game's universe but in the real world many call "space AIDS" (there is no nicer way to say it). shadow himself is the final product of the initial prototype which was the bio-lizard. SEGA has gone back and forth canonising how shadow got his name as it was called "project SHADOW" before he was even given his hedgehog appearance. frankly i think they try too hard to put so much of his existence's meaning onto just maria. she's the one who gave him his name (confirmed in one of the sonic channel comics), she's the one that designed his boots... (confirmed as of shadow generations) just putting all this on a 12 year old girl and gerald going along with it is kind of ridiculous to me but then again, she does come from a family of superiour intellect, so it's not abnormal to think maybe maria had some of that genius in her too.
but shadow is more complicated of an existence than that. yes, he was initially designed as a cure for maria's illness, but he needed help somewhere. that's where black doom came into the mix. black doom had more ulteriour motives for helping to create shadow, motives that gerald wasn't all too keen on. somewhere along the way his madness started to seep in and he began to reject the being known as shadow (as revealed in his journal entries in shadow generations). in sonic adventure 2, he had modified shadow's memories at some point during captivity to make him twist maria's last wish to him (somehow archie went out of their way to make this more believable when they show that gerald was being used for some government bullshit before being executed. the game never shows this. archie isn't by any means canon btw, but SEGA did oversee some of it's development...i mean... they gave shadow the alien backstory years before SEGA themselves did LMAO).
shadow's bond with maria is a complicated one. shiro maekawa, who conceptualised both, personally ships the two. whether they are intended to be a genuine romantic pair in canon is up in the air as, again, from SEGA of japan's own mouth, they have sibling-like chemistry. maekawa based shadow and maria off of the pairing in please save my earth, which is a space romance shoujo. having seen what i have from it, these characters are nothing like the characters in that manga and are mostly aesthetically based on them if anything. maria herself is also based on alice in wonderland, quite obviously too. shadow was co-created between maekawa and takashi iizuka who got inspiration from vegeta lmfao. interestingly enough, during one of the exhibits in japan promoting shadow generations, they've covered up the part on the original design notes for shadow that say "ベジータ". LMAO. they might be trying to hide that for copyright reasons though. japan don't fuck around with that.
anyways, just because the creators of something personally ship a pairing outside of the source material, it doesn't mean i have to ship it. even if it's meant to be canonically romantic either, that still doesn't matter to me. there's plenty of canon ships in media i dont give a fuck about. am i supposed to just because it's canon? anyways........................ all this to say i don't personally ship it romantically. in fact, to me, shadow and maria have a "love" that is beyond labels. neither platonic nor romantic. a secret third thing.
i'm starting to not care as much that people ship shadaria/shadria because whatever. age her up if you must. but i have some... opinions about why i personally don't really ship it myself.
alright so for context for the rest of this, SEGA has removed the character ages as of like... 2024? so they no longer have CANON ages, but characters like tails, cream, and charmy, are still mostly regarded as children among the fandom. what of maria?
i personally do not care about human/mobian ships. (mobian is an archie/satAM term but the fandom still uses it to refer to the animal characters in universe because it's just easier to call them that. it is not a term canon to SEGA themselves). during sonic's concept stages, he had a human gf named madonna, so it's not like it's unheard of for this to mix. also in most animal-centric media, you always see human/animal relationships and that was never weird to me because it was cartoon logic. calling it bestiality is retarded tbh.
anyways, i personally like rouge/topaz. i don't mind sonic/elise.
so what's wrong with maria/shadow? why is this one "bad" but shadamy (amy, who was originally 12, and shadow who is ageless but built to be 15) is okay? in fact, how is sonadow okay when sonic was 15 and again, shadow is ageless but has existed 50 years more than sonic? it's because maria, who is canonically 12 according to sonic X...
...is also a human that is 12, that died at the age of 12. she can never age. amy, who was also 12 before SEGA removed their ages, is a mobian and can age. elise, 17, can age. topaz (adult), can age. the important thing is that they can canonically age. maria cannot. ever. but it's also important to me to make this human and mobian distinction between amy and maria specifically because that seems to be the biggest dichotomy of ship discourse about the two in regards to shadow specifically.
i don't care if people age up maria, go ahead. i never cared about the "aging up" a character discourse because we all did that as kids when we wanted to see what their faves would look like grown up. i don't see it any different doing it as adults and i especially don't care what your nefarious reasons for doing it are. my problem is shipping her with shadow as she is. she is a human that can't age. amy is a mobian, like shadow, that can age. that is my biggest issue with it. i'm also in the minority that doesn't see them as siblings either. most anti-shadria shippers cope by seeing them as siblings because in the shadow the hedgehog 2005 guidebook, it says maria and shadow have a "sibling-like" relationship in english AND japanese >>
so why so much discourse? as far as i know, this was the first "canon" inference of the two being like siblings. before that, maria was simple called his "best friend". shadow exists as a cure to maria's illness which is specific to the game's universe but in the real world many call "space AIDS" (there is no nicer way to say it). shadow himself is the final product of the initial prototype which was the bio-lizard. SEGA has gone back and forth canonising how shadow got his name as it was called "project SHADOW" before he was even given his hedgehog appearance. frankly i think they try too hard to put so much of his existence's meaning onto just maria. she's the one who gave him his name (confirmed in one of the sonic channel comics), she's the one that designed his boots... (confirmed as of shadow generations) just putting all this on a 12 year old girl and gerald going along with it is kind of ridiculous to me but then again, she does come from a family of superiour intellect, so it's not abnormal to think maybe maria had some of that genius in her too.
but shadow is more complicated of an existence than that. yes, he was initially designed as a cure for maria's illness, but he needed help somewhere. that's where black doom came into the mix. black doom had more ulteriour motives for helping to create shadow, motives that gerald wasn't all too keen on. somewhere along the way his madness started to seep in and he began to reject the being known as shadow (as revealed in his journal entries in shadow generations). in sonic adventure 2, he had modified shadow's memories at some point during captivity to make him twist maria's last wish to him (somehow archie went out of their way to make this more believable when they show that gerald was being used for some government bullshit before being executed. the game never shows this. archie isn't by any means canon btw, but SEGA did oversee some of it's development...i mean... they gave shadow the alien backstory years before SEGA themselves did LMAO).
shadow's bond with maria is a complicated one. shiro maekawa, who conceptualised both, personally ships the two. whether they are intended to be a genuine romantic pair in canon is up in the air as, again, from SEGA of japan's own mouth, they have sibling-like chemistry. maekawa based shadow and maria off of the pairing in please save my earth, which is a space romance shoujo. having seen what i have from it, these characters are nothing like the characters in that manga and are mostly aesthetically based on them if anything. maria herself is also based on alice in wonderland, quite obviously too. shadow was co-created between maekawa and takashi iizuka who got inspiration from vegeta lmfao. interestingly enough, during one of the exhibits in japan promoting shadow generations, they've covered up the part on the original design notes for shadow that say "ベジータ". LMAO. they might be trying to hide that for copyright reasons though. japan don't fuck around with that.
anyways, just because the creators of something personally ship a pairing outside of the source material, it doesn't mean i have to ship it. even if it's meant to be canonically romantic either, that still doesn't matter to me. there's plenty of canon ships in media i dont give a fuck about. am i supposed to just because it's canon? anyways........................ all this to say i don't personally ship it romantically. in fact, to me, shadow and maria have a "love" that is beyond labels. neither platonic nor romantic. a secret third thing.
