INSPIRATION
Way, way, way, way back when I actually kinda engaged with the Sonic fandom, I'd see a few people here and there throw out ideas concerning Antoine, rather than actually write stories featuring him or ones where he could play a major part. One idea I remember seeing was someone who said he could've lost part of his tail in an accident, and that's why he became so anxious. I dunno, that could've made for a good fic, IMHO. But barely anybody writes anything that just centers around him and him alone, or even just giving him a B plot in a bigger story. I've seen readers leave reviews on Antoine-centric fics admitting that they would've liked to have written something about Antoine themselves, but were scared to because of the potential reactions from the rest of the fandom. Don't know how stuff is today, but you can indeed witness a lot of Antoine bashing in fanfic reviews. I have the feeling that's why a lot of Antoine ideas never got the story treatment. Shame on those who bully others into repressing their creativity just because they can't cope with someone liking a character that they don't.
All that said, I don't think some of these people were intimidated by Antoine bashers as much as they either weren't very creative/or just despised the very idea of going against canon. For example, that one weird person who didn't want me to have Antoine and Lupe interacting theorized about Antoine having OCD as well as some other stuff for him, but never did anything with any of it AFAIK. And that kind of thinking confuses me so much. I don't even get the point of why you'd devise so much headcanon for him to begin with, only to not want to use it.
I will say I was influenced by the following people who waved the haters and the source material off and powered on through:
StarlitSvader: She devised a number of intriguing headcanons for the little guy, including the idea that Antoine's jumpiness is actually caused by his having keener than average hearing, a concept I utilized in Knight Errand. And I was pleasantly surprised to see that she's still actively creating stuff for Antoine!
Omnicenos: Someone who genuinely likes Antoine and doesn't feel like the character must be ground under Sonic and the others' heels and treating this as an acceptable thing. Some of my Antoine headcanons are courtesy of this cool dude. Sonic does crack on Antoine off and on in his story Kitsune, but also has to eat crow himself at several different points and even has something genuinely nice to say about him later on, so things actually with the cast actually feels balanced, something I greatly appreciate. He also seems to have a more down to earth view of the KFFs, as opposed to the "Sonic and Sally are untouchable deities who are always perfect" mindset that so many other fans suffer from. I remember there being a picture of Sonic checking Sally out while her attention was elsewhere on his deviantART account, and some stan commenting Sonic would never do that to Sally because he's so mature and such a gentleman and blah blah blah. Wingedhippocampus' response was that Sonic is a hormonal teenaged boy, which is 100% on the money (heck, I had Antoine checking out Leeta and Lyco in Knight Errand). Lastly, bonus points to WHP for writing the other KFFs in a way that doesn't make me want to throw rocks at them.
KivatheDCWizard: One of the first people I saw actually doing proper AUs for the western canons. I really like a lot of his ideas for Antoine as a character in his settings.
Also, let me just say that even though I no longer like the Knothole Freedom Fighters like I used to, that doesn't extend to AUs where they're actually fleshed out as characters and given more appealing personalities. The aforementioned writers all succeed in doing that (without trashing Antoine or using him as a tool for angst or ridicule in the process to boot). Spiral Writer is working on her own Sonic reboot that has Bunnie at the helm instead of Sally. It sounds like it's going to be pretty fun and inventive.
FUTURE PLANS
Antoine is a character that I've devised a lot of headcanon for, just because canon didn't bother to fill in the blanks, or I just don't like what they did. Sorry not sorry, but I want to write an actual character, not a walking talking plot device/one of Sonic and Sally's cheerleaders.
This is what we do it with Archie and Archie-adjacent grimdark misery porn lore 'round these here parts:
What'd be the point of using Archie's stuff for him anyways? At least my ideas come from a place of actually being invested in the character. IMHO, the Archie writers just threw whatever at him and went "Okay, glad I got that crap outta the way, now back to the important stuff -- more Sonic/Sally relationship melodrama!"
I'm sure certain people who might read this will say I'm just mad jealous of Archie because they're professional writers whose names everybody knows while I'm just some nobody. I wasn't aware that calling out poor writing means you're really just sooper sekritly jelly of the pro writers, but okay. You right.
Secondly, I wouldn't want to work for a big company like SEGA or Archie, where there are restrictions in place on the types of stories I can tell or what I can and cannot do with the characters in the first place. That's why I'm currently plotting out my own original graphic novel.*
I'm also just really over all the fan works where Antoine ends up either extremely depressed/ physically disfigured/maimed/dying and the whole plot just revolving solely around that. Like he's never shown pushing through adversity and discovering fulfillment or contentment. Can he have a nice ending for once? There is so much of that kind of content out there and it's just... blegh. I guess Antoine fans don't like hopecore.
Most of my ideas deal with Antoine breaking away from the other KFFs and finding friendship and romance elsewhere. And in at least two stories the KFFs don't even exist (either as a group or the individual characters themselves). To me, it just doesn't really make any sense for him to continue hanging around people who often act like the KFFs do towards him. Seriously, the other KFFs are super mean to him in these fics even when he isn't doing anything, is trying his best to achieve something, or has the audacity to show a little concern for someone (typically Sally). IMHO, kinda amazing the fanbase sees nothing wrong with characters who are supposed to be these wonderful, magnanimous heroes acting this way. But I think that says a lot right there. All the fanfics as well as the fans that treat that kind of thing as being just fine come across as pushing a highly toxic, immature mindset. The "friendship" between Antoine and the others also comes across as being pretty forced, in both canon and in fanfics (again, not counting the stories of the previously named authors). What does he have in common with any of them? What does he have in common with Bunnie even? Another Antoine fan (who's actually rational in regards to the source material) told me that it is believable that Antoine and the other KFFs would be linked together based on the shared trauma they experienced as children, but that doesn't equate to them working as friends. I'd much rather Antoine go make more worthwhile relationships elsewhere. There are tons of other characters across the various branches of the franchise, so why not explore his dynamics he could have with somebody else?
The Stranger, which is currently being worked on, was inspired by Steven Universe and Chainsaw Man. I don't want to give too much away, but the summary is as follows: "Two unlikely Freedom Fighters suddenly get much, much closer then anyone thought could ever be possible. This has far-reaching consequences for not only them, but those around them as well."
Kindred Spirits is basically a rewrite of the SatAM episode "Ghostbusted", only with a plot that's actually interesting (or at least I think it's interesting). Basically, Antoine and Tails encounter a real ghost who they befriend after some initial misunderstandings between them.
Antoine will also be prominently featured in Sonic And The the Guardians Of Acorn as one of the major characters alongside Sonic and a few other familiar faces. I've also started playing around with a separate crossover idea where a certain DC character gets introduced into Sonic's world. Better believe that Tony's gonna be present in that story.
HEADCANON
You could alternately dub this section "how I personally would improve upon Antoine as a character."
Something that really gets under my skin is when people see someone else writing about a certain character and whining "Why are you writing about them? There's no point!" with the implication being that said character is flat, not interesting, one with a very small role in the source material, etc, ergo, so they don't need to have fanfic written about them.
I beg to differ. Just about any character out there can carry a story if it's 1) written well, and 2) you get creative with both your plot and the character in question. I've seen people complain about other fans writing fanfics focusing on characters like Krypto the Superdog and Minerva Mink. "Why would anyone want to write about them??" Hmm, maybe because fanfiction doesn't always need to be about the popular characters and ships 24-7, or only focused on the characters that you like? Shockingly enough, the world doesn't revolve around you and your preferences, Karen/Ken. Now, I don't know about the quality of Minerva fics, but I have seen people write actual good stories about Krypto before (the version from the old animated series). There are characters out there that I absolutely hate, but I'm not going to tell people not to write about them or flip out because somebody did write a fic starring them because I'm not a jackass.
Basically my point is Antoine can carry a story just as easily as Sally or Tails or Sonic can. I just think you have to actually like or at least be interested in his character and want to explore him beyond just the surface-level: "My dad/or mom abused me/Muh trauma/Bunnie I love you."
-- I tend to refer to my Antoine as Tony for shorthand as a way differentiate him from his canon self (BTW, I do this with Esteban too -- he has a different surname in my headcanon then he does in the show).
-- My Antoine is of Mexican and French heritage. Long time ago I saw a post somewhere suggesting that Antoine was a hybrid -- part dog, part coyote (before Archie gave him an official species, people weren't sure what he was supposed to be. I've seen him be called everything from a fox to a shrew). It seems like someone might have said he was part poodle too, I'm sure as an insult. But I like that as a serious idea and have used it ever since. To me, it works to explain away his hair. Also, this is kinda funny, but there was this one adult animated series, House Pets, that I don't care for at all, but I found it funny that it featured a poodle falling in love with a coyote. XD
His mother is Carmen Moreno e Lopez, and his father's named Siarl de Colete. I swapped the ‘rents species around from my old fanon, so now Carmen's a coyote and Siarl is a poodle. That was done because I rarely see male poodle characters anywhere. Also, it technically makes Antoine a dogote (coyote mother, dog father) rather than a coydog, which is the other way around. Carmen and Siarl's characters are still being worked on.
-- The spelling of Antoine's family name in my fics is "de Colete" instead of "D’Coolette". The former looks more like an actual name. Apparently D’Coolette was a name tossed around for him in the original show bible before the show went with Depardieu. His full name is Antoine Miguel de Colete (because mom figured that if he wasn't going to have a Spanish first name, then he sure as heck was gonna have Spanish somewhere in his name).
-- I originally made Antoine a coydog because of the short tail he was/is drawn with in canon, but that's before I realized people often docked the tails of poodles. So my Antoine just has a regular long tail now. His appearance is a bit shaggier than in canon as well, especially on his ears, throat, chest, and elbows. His hairstyle is based on Timothee Chalamet’s (and it is his actual hair). It's also less of a bright yellow color like we sometimes see and more golden blonde. His base fur color has varied from canon to canon, but generally I stick with lighter/medium brown shades like caramel and Peru brown for him. Here's a new redesign I did which incorporates black and white into his coat. It makes it more apparent that he is a coyote mix.
- In a few non-Guardian settings, Carmen died when Antoine was small, so he remembers little of the Spanish she spoke. He can understand it to an extent however.
-- His favorite foods are honeycrisp apples and and soupe à l'oignon. There's a Spanish dish that he also really enjoys, but I haven't decided on what it could be yet. I thought it'd be a nice nod to his mother's heritage.
- I deepened Antoine's center. Rather than just wanting to win Sally's hand, what he actually wants is to be a hero that everybody looks up to and loves. Getting Sally (when he starts out crushing on her; in my stories he either gets over her or doesn't even know who she is, so the crush never happens in the first place) would just be an added bonus for him. I do think part of the issue with the character is that he gets reduced to being one of Sally's orbiters, even after getting with Bunnie, and very much comes across as a simp. Then you got Antoine's dad working for Sally's dad as his general. I completely did away with the family connections to the Acorns and just have the de Coletes doing their own separate thing entirely. Doing so I feel potentially helps with worldbuilding, because now you get to explore a new locale on Mobius (the de Coletes' homeland), not just the place where the KFFs live/operate out of. Just having all the Freedom Fighters growing up alongside Sally limits them as characters.
- Antoine is on the autism spectrum. Many people online approach certain characters as being autistic. It's kind of a mixed bag. I both see a lot and hear a lot about these fans' takes on autistic characters, often infantilizing them -- peak irony, considering that some of these fans are more than likely the same sorts of people who consider Abed from the show Community an offensive stereotype when he's probably closer to an actual depiction of an autistic person as opposed to their uwu smol soft bean babbu who stims and watches Bluey is.
Currently, Antoine's one of the only characters I have that I do headcanon as actually being on the spectrum. I was lurking at the forum for the old defunct website Sonic HQ where this person brought up the possibility of Antoine being autistic. For some extra added irony, this person double posted, and their posts had that particular... tone you tend to find from people who are neurodivergent. Nonetheless, I found myself agreeing with what this person had to say. I'm sure SatAM's writers didn't even intend for this to be a thing because they just wanted Antoine to be made fun of, but to me, some of his quirks could be read as autism. You got the social awkwardness, the overly formal/unusual way of talking, the clumsiness, the tendency to take things literally. I read his dislike of margarine as a food sensitivity. I was hinting that this was the case with him all the way back in Knight Errand, but don't know if people picked up on it or not.
-- I've made Antoine a fencer, so he doesn't have the saber/cutlass that he was shown to use in the comics. It isn't like we were ever told what kind of sword fighting style he even uses, so whatever. He uses a rapier (which I think looks much more elegant and appealing than his Archie cutlass), eventually becoming one heck of a swordsman.
-- I don't mind his being into cooking and cuisine too much. I don't know if I want him to be doing that in Guardians Of Acorn though, since his hyper focus there is monsters and dealing with them. Maybe he could get into baking though, since that utilizes chemistry in a sense.
-- "He's a soldier/knight/royal guard/noble!" Well, he was supposed to be a palace guard in SatAM. Don't think the comics ever actually cared about what he was supposed to be or his role there. I don't know where any of that other stuff comes from either. These days I generally just approach him as a swashbuckler-style character.
-- Shockingly enough, Antoine actually was going to get his own personal enemy in the post New Wave Genesis setting, a badger named Inigo Cortez. Knowing Ian Flynn’s stellar writing ability however, I'm sure Sonic would've also dominated that storyline just like he did the one that was supposed to be about Rotor and his backstory.
At any rate, I like the idea behind Cortez enough to want to use him in my stories. I think giving Antoine his own personal nemesis/foil could punch him up as a character. I'm considering changing Cortez's first name (I suspect it's meant as a nod to the Princess Bride character, and I'd personally rather not tie such a cool hero to a villain), though I'm still on the fence about that. I had the idea of his family hailing from the same area where Carmen and her family lived/or his family knowing the Lopezes.
- I'm just going to copy and paste something Wingedhippocampus said here: Yes, I KNOW there was a SatAm episode where Antoine claims he can't swim. I call bullsh*t. Canines who've never seen anything deeper than a water dish in their lives can swim if you throw them into water deep enough to facilitate it. I think they were just overplaying the whole useless coward angle is all.
- This is where I thank Omnicenos again. If I had to associate an element with Antoine, then I'd choose the element of water. This is due to Omnicenos' story Kitsune. To directly quote from it: "Antoine is mercurial, his mind and emotions flow from one thing to another. He will often become whatever a situation requires him to be, in the manner than a stream will allow itself to be split by stones, but always comes back together. Antoine is Water."
- Although one of the reasons why I appreciate Antoine is in part due to his being an ordinary dude who still chooses to fight, I also don't mind tricking him out with a little extra something to make his fighting these robots and wizards and stuff believable. I very much want to avoid the "Rock Lee" problem of a character getting left behind while his teammates get stronger (Sonic and his speed, Sally and whatever superpower/or mystical doohickey a writer decides to give her for that day, Nicole, Tails, Bunnie). Antoine's just not capable of fighting the increasingly more dangerous enemies without serious risk to his life, so I'd much rather power him up somehow than have him be forced to stand on the sidelines playing cheerleader.
Hilariously enough, of course you have people getting angry when you (and by that I mean me*, or the New Wave Genesis continuity where Antoine could do a spin dash technique with his sword that was like the only cool thing Ian Flynn has ever had him do) give Antoine a special ability of his own, because now he's a Gary Stu or whatever in their minds. You heard it right here, guys -- super hearing is a Gary Stu power! 🤣
Y'all hate him when he wants to run off and hide. Y'all hate him when he isn't a coward and he gets an ability boost so he can better help the other heroes out. These kinds of people just hate him existing period and will never be happy no matter what's done to improve on him as a character.
Then you have the Antoine fans who don't want him developing any kind of new useful skill or ability because once again, it all ties into their deep obsession to preserve the comics/SatAM where he's just this flat fodder character. What is with these people? Am I the only person who finds this kind of environment -- one that says you're not allowed to sandbox and play around with new ideas -- extremely rigid and unwelcoming? If people want to stick to canon that badly then fine, but don't force your views onto me or other people and then get pissy when we disagree.
*To date, the only other Antoine fans I know of who've given Antoine some kind of special ability have been StarlitSvader and KivatheDCwizard.
At any rate, the abilities/powers Antoine winds up with will vary depending on the story. We'll get to see a superpowered Antoine in The Stranger, the DC crossover (spoiler alert: he becomes the Mobius equivalent of Steel there), and GoA.
So, what is Antoine's problem aside from the autism? Well, in case you couldn't tell, I hate the "abusive father" trope fans often use to explain away the issues of self-aggrandizing characters like him. I keep on seeing this with these types of characters -- Blitz, Vernon Fenwick, probably some other ones I forgot about right now. I think it's lazy writing for one. It's never fully explored, and you'll be lucky if the story bothers to take it into consideration by having other characters become aware of the issue and try treating the other character with grace, instead of the usual contempt and harsh impatience.
Anyways, Antoine is insecure and has a poor self image. In that respect, he's actually got a lot in common with the Leonardo we get in Rise Of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (a series which I actually quite like). This is an excellent video delving into Leo's hang-ups and which I feel also applies to my interpretation of Antoine.
BTW, Antoine's self-image is going to be delved into a lot in The Stranger.
PERSONAL
"You act like Antoine never did anything wrong!"
Number 1) Oh I'm definitely biased. Like I've said previously, yes, I get being that annoying person who's on a different wavelength than everybody else. To me, all the hatred towards him is overblown to a frankly toxic degree (yes, it is toxic to attack people online for having the audacity to like Antoine and leaving hate comments on fan art/fics).
Number 2) Like with Blitz and Esteban, Antoine is just silly and annoying at worst. But people act like he's Jeffrey Epstein mixed with Logan Paul or something. It's hella weird. A portion of the hate definitely has roots in Francophobia and homophobia. It may have gotten dialed back in the last couple of years since online fandom spaces have started leaning more left (though I honestly don't know what side the Sonic fandom falls under), but I definitely remember seeing some people call Antoine "fruity" or "feminine".
I feel a lot of his antagonist moments in the comics (such as his being the prosecutor during Sonic's trial after Sonic was roboticized and attacked the KFFs) come across as just trying to make Antoine look as awful as possible. Then after he "reformed", they had no clue what to even do with him, so he just floundered around being a nothingburger. And people hate him and think he shouldn't exist because of the writers not caring about trying to make him an actual character.
Honestly, I don't get why more people aren't upset by the characterization of the SatAM characters in Archie.
Bunny: Boring ho. :) How one makes a literal cyborg boring I don't know, but Archie certainly did it.
Sonic: Self-interested manwhore who treats his best friend like his very own personal boot licker and was willing to toss aside their friendship all because he wanted into Fiona Fox's pants. He also slept with his "friend's" girlfriend. This y'all's boy?
Antoine: Exists to have every bad thing imaginable happen to him. Also boring.
Sally: If people thought she was a Mary Sue in the cartoon, then the comic ramps it up to obscene levels.
Rotor: Got his back jacked up.
But if you want to talk about toxic positivity, then one doesn't need to look any further than the Archie Sonic fandom (unless something bad happened to Sally, then the comics somehow became the literal worst thing ever).
The Sonic series could have easily taken cues from shows like Avatar: The Last Airbender, He-Man, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Stormhawks, Buzz Lightyear Of Star Command, or Legion Of Superheroes, series where different characters were allowed to take the spotlight and we got to know them better as the series progressed. I suspect that if you (hypothetically) gave the SatAM concept to a different group of writers, like, I dunno, the folks who worked on the Mike Young version of He-Man, we could've seen a more emotional story about a character who desperately wanted to prove himself gradually learn important lessons through trial and error, and actually grow. That show, while not perfect, was still good at exploring the flaws and insecurities of the heroes and developing them. But the writers never cared about other characters. It was just the Sonic and Sally Show. It's why partly I don't care about canon any. And then there are people out there who unironically say Sally didn't get enough attention in SatAM? It's like "What the hell are you even talking about?? Are we watching the same show?"
Anyways, I can say that my stories don't revolve around acting like Antoine can never do no wrong. He does boneheaded things, looks silly, and makes mistakes. So do the other characters! I was doing that all the way back in Knight Errand. I don't treat him like the infallible God Emperor of the universe who's tears can cure cancer, because that'd be boring. He's just a dude. I appreciate that ordinary-ness. Ironically, I don't feel stans of certain characters are capable of doing that for their favorites. Like I never hear Sally stans actually talking about the her flaws (but according to them, "She's totally not a Mary Sue you guys! Agree with me, or else I'll find out where you live and stab you!"), or Sonic stans doing the same for that character. It's all just usually about how cool and amazing they are. If they are given flaws, then it's stuff like they "care too much" or have sad backstories -- stuff that in no way actually impedes them.
But someone once told me that a bunch of fans love projecting like an IMAX lol. This person was absolutely 110% correct in that regard (heck, you can say that same about people outside of fandom spaces).
We all have characters we dislike for one reason or other, and that’s okay -- but you don’t have to take it farther than that. People who spend their time obsessing over hating a certain character, IMHO, have some other kind of issue(s) going on within themselves/or in their lives. It becomes an even bigger problem when they start shifting that hatred over to the fans of said character -- like how dare someone else like the character just because they personally hate them. I'm going to say the same thing I said about Blitz before: the simple solution for fan writers would be just to either write Antoine differently, or don't have him in your story to begin with. Characters are just abstract thoughts that can be interpreted in any number of ways.
*Yeah, so about that original concept of mine's -- it's still a work in progress. I might talk about it sometime over on Pillowfort, but I'm gonna keep a lot of info close to my chest because there are skeevy people who be out here stealing.
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