The Character Corner: Antoine, part 2

 

This is my exact same reaction when I have to do taxes or anything finance related.

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?

One fic will be a collection of one-shots featuring him and Lyco. Another story I have in mind has a heavy emphasis on drama when, after discovering that Bunnie and Sonic have stabbed him in the back by hooking up together behind his back, Antoine decides to leave the KFFs behind for G.U.N, where he meets a certain black and red hedgehog... Oh yes, I'm doing that fic.

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 to 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).

-- 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). Someone else said he was part poodle, I'm sure as an insult. But I like that as a serious idea and have used it ever since. To me, it actually 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

My Antoine is of Mexican and French heritage. 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.

ETA: I forgot to mention this, but a trope I used to see in Sonic fanfic is making Armand either abusive or extremely controlling. I don't know if this is still a thing or not. It's something that's never made any sense to me. The vibe I got from canon is that he actually admired his dad. His mother already sounded kind of neglectful in the comics.

-- 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 often 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 also potentially helps with worldbuilding, because now you get to explore a brand new locale on Mobius (the de Coletes' homeland), not just the same place where the KFFs live/operate out of. Just having had all the Freedom Fighters grow up alongside Sally limits them as characters and is pretty boring.

- 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, it doesn't have anything to do with parental abuse. Siarl and Carmen were/are perfectly normal and loving towards Antoine. 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. 

ETA: Accidentally posted the wrong video!

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. 

ETA: The talented and prolific Rob Paulson's voicework as Antoine adds to the character's adorkable factor. One of the best birthday gifts I've ever received before was someone who snagged me a recording from Rob at a fan convention. He did a little greeting for me as Antoine! <3

*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.

My *new* art account and the actual reason why I left Buzzly.

If you wanna see:

-- fan and original characters 

-- fan art, including concept art for my AUs

-- writing prompts and sneak peaks of future fanfic ideas

Then just click here!

Looking back at when I first brought up my dissatisfaction with Buzzly here, I didn't really say why, apart from the people there being very unfriendly. I'm going to try my best not to get overly political about this, but nowadays, with the way creative communities tend to be, that's kind of hard to do. That's the reason why I was so reluctant to say anything initially. 

In terms of atmosphere, Buzzly feels less like an art site and more like Reddit or Tumblr Jr. In other words, there's a lot of weird people who hold extremist views there. I'm not coming at this from an angle of "Well they're bad because they don't believe what my party believes!" I don't like extremists of any stripe period. 

The worst person I know of is an individual whose said stuff like not liking furries is transphobic (???) and thought Zootopia 2 should revolve around the topic of police brutality. Since when did furries become exclusively trans? And is this person saying you have to be a trans person in order to be a furry? Worst of all was the time when someone posted about the death of FurAffinity founder Dragoneer. Someone in the comments asked (and this is paraphrased on my part) "Wasn't Dragoneer into explicit material involving children?" Well, same individual who wanted a family movie to tackle police brutality went off on the person who asked that.

I looked into the matter myself. I didn't see anything pointing to the guy being into cp, but he did have a history of defending not just kid diddlers, but zoophiles as well (before someone goes "What's your source for that? 'Trust me bro?'", there's a certain website I checked because they're very good at documenting stuff there. I'm not going to name it here however because it's very infamous). 

Yo, why are you so hot about someone asking the right questions about this Dragoneer guy? Yes, I believe people should be fully judged by the company they keep. You don't like it? Quit hanging around shady people then.

That's one of the reasons why I feel like furries have a real problem with empathy. They want empathy and understanding for themselves of course, but extending that to other people? Unless they're fellow furries, fat chance of that happening. This is a repeated pattern I've seen with the majority of the ones I've encountered before. I've said before here that I have issues with furries. At this point I'm just gonna come on out and say that I honestly don't care for them. Are there nice, chill furries out there? Yes, I've encountered a few here and there before. But the fandom overall has some major issues going on that most seem unwilling to talk about. They try to act friendly and caring at times, but generally are very self-involved, rude, manipulative, sexist, and have this constant victimhood mindset. You can see this very same subject being discussed here. Keep an eye out for the gentleman who shares an incredibly messed-up story about a young family member of his who became involved with furry fandom. 

Another common thread I've noticed is that if you have something to say about furries that isn't purely cooing praise, you are automatically dismissed out of hand as being a liar. And if somebody in the furry fandom commits a crime (which often includes crimes against children/or animals), these same kinds of people will say stuff like "Oh no, this is gonna make the fandom look bad!"/"Hey, don't judge all furries because of this person!"

...

I think a normal human response to hearing about sexual crimes against kids/or animals or what have you would be something like "Hey, that's terrible. I'm sorry [the victims] had to go through something like that." Or "People shouldn't treat animals that way. These people do not represent the fandom in any way, shape, or form." 

No. Instead it's the poor pitiful furries out there who deserve our sympathy, attention, and understanding. Not the victims of their crimes. 

Absolutely sociopathic behavior.

But that's all the Dragoneer defender (we'll just call them DD because why not?) does, run around Buzzly acting like a redditor. Someone posted a picture of a forest once, and DD left a comment under it trashing (American, presumably) right-wingers. I don't consider most of my views conservative, but it's like "What does any of that have to even do with anything? You didn't say a single word about the picture. Why can't you just appreciate someone's artwork instead of hijacking it with your political views?" These types of people have zero concept of "time and place". DD once bragged about staying indoors all the time and not having any IRL friends. Very obviously cope. It just reminded me of the Wojak meme where the person is wearing the smug face mask while you can see tears streaming down their cheeks. 

But that's what Buzzly turned out to be all about. There are other people on that site who are like that as well, but DD was the absolute worst. If I did happen to see people interacting with each other, 80% of it was devoted to whining about A.I. The rest was western politics. I understand the problems and controversies revolving around A.I., but there's actual art created by human hands there that nobody there really seems very interested in. They just wanted to be buttmad about everything. The handful of chill people there aren't enough to save the site in my eyes.

TL;DR: was on art site where nobody actually cared about art. Wild stuff.

The Character Corner: Antoine, part 1

 

♪ Why am I such a misfit? 
I am not just a nit wit!
  I'm an adorable coyote 
Why don't I fit in? ♪

Antoine does not have a character. And I say that as an Antoine fan who has a screencap of him as her Archive Of Our Own avatar. At least with Blitz he was in a show that got canceled by the network it was on after one season. Likewise, Esteban also has a character, even though they did very stupid things with him. The opportunity to develop Antoine in the Archie comics after SatAM's cancellation was sitting right there, since the show had a lot of 90's cartoon tropes and there was no way that Antoine was ever gonna get any kind of development there. 

But the comic writers completely failed to do so. The comic ran for over twenty years, not to mention getting a reboot. That's what makes his situation significantly worse than either Blitz or Esteban's (also, like I said, both those characters did manage to get a few decent moments in their respective series). 

Seriously, Antoine's just defined by his relationship to Sonic (rivalry and antagonism) and his one-sided infatuation with Sally. He's French, used to be scared of everything all the time, but then stopped being scared (gee, would've been neat to have seen that actually play out over the course of the comic...). And then he fell in love with Bunnie and they got married. Also, a bunch of bad stuff happened to him, like getting blown up by a robot and put into a coma.

That's it, that's the entire character. 

What am I supposed to do with any of that? Sad thing is, there were little things to the character that one could've easily taken and built something off of. But nobody -- not Ian Flynn, not Ken Penders, not Karl Bollers -- no one cared. Then you had the New Wave Genesis whatever (I hate that name, it's so unwieldy), which was a chance to start fresh and actually take Antoine's character somewhere. He was going to get a focus story there before the series was cancelled, but given the fact that Rotor had also gotten a background story that focused more on Sonic and his reactions to things rather than Rotor's, I have no doubt it would've just been the same for Antoine. Plus, I don't exactly trust Flynn when it comes to writing Antoine, given that he considers Antoine to be selfish and narcissistic. 🤨

Antoine didn't need to be headlining stories 24/7, but come on, they could've given him a little something to do aside from just having misfortune constantly befall to him or being stuck in bad soap opera plotlines (that were never further explored or followed up on. How did he feel about being stuck on the opposite Mobius, for example?). Archie writers really did think tragedy = character depth.

They did attempt to give him a little backstory late into the game. One would think his dad would've had a bigger role in both Antoine's life as well as the storyline, given that he was one of Robotnik's roboticized lieutenants, but he was just a bland cipher. His mom was apparently a terrible person, then he also had this really horrible girlfriend named Tatiana that he'd apparently dated before he and Bunnie were an item but who we had never heard of before until that particular backup comic. Not that any of that matters, because none of it was never brought up again or played a part in anything after, AFAIK. But Archie had a very bad habit of doing that with a number of their characters. Gee, you'd think that if Antoine looked up to his dad so much he might've named his son after him in his honor, but he ultimately cared about him as much as Flynn and the other writers did, lol.

So why the interest from me in this relatively obscure, very unpopular character? Well, I only barely remember one episode of SatAM, where Sonic and Tails had gone into Robotropolis and encountered Muttski. The show aired at a time where I didn't really wanna wake up to watch it, so I don't think I ever saw any other episodes, or if I did, they didn't leave much of an impression. So my first introduction to Antoine came about when I'd go to the grocery store with my parents, find my way to the magazine and comic book section, and read the Archie Sonic comics. 

I've always felt pretty bad for him because he was just written to be a bad luck magnet. Same factor for why I also like characters like Fredo Corleone, or the two dudes I brought up at the beginning of this post. I sympathize with being that weird kid who didn't fit in with the rest but really wished they did, liked somebody else who was way out of their league, and tended to screw up/or got made to feel like a screw up by others. Every now and then you'd get these little glimpses of character here and there with Antoine, or moments where you could extrapolate what his personality was like beyond just being comic relief. The sense of honor. Refinement. His fastidiousness. Sensitivity. His attempts at wooing Sally, while goofy, had earnestness to them. He's a romantic (granted, I do not like his canonical love interest anymore). The hill that I will die on is that he is ride or die true blue, venturing into danger alongside the other Freedom Fighters in spite of his own fears. He might be whiny, he might wanna leave and go home, but never does.

Oh yeah, the rest of the Knothole Freedom Fighters. What do I think about them? 

(Well, I don't mind Tails.) Nowadays, I view Antoine's loyalty to the other Freedom Fighters as just people clinging to the status quo. I don't feel Sally and the others deserve or are worthy of his loyalty. Over the years I have grown to like them less and less as characters. Yes, I'm fully aware that's a very unpopular opinion to have. Sorry not sorry. I do not, to loosely quote William Friedkin, give a flying flip into a rolling doughnut about what other people think about me or my opinions. Don't think I have for years now. Back in the day I had to deal with countless anonymous people throwing hate my way for the vile crime of liking a cartoon coyote/or not liking said cartoon coyote the "correct way". So yeah, I've just gotten more apathetic towards the opinions of others over my preferences.

Actually, I don't understand why people to this day clamor for the Freedom Fighters to show up in something when 98% of the time the spotlight's on Sonic and Sally anyways. Or Tails, Nicole, Scourge, or Fiona. Or the writer's super amazing donut steel Spicy the Two-Tailed Cheetah or some such. So why do y'all even want Bunnie, Antoine, and Rotor there? They barely do anything. Rotor does mechanic stuff (even though Tails is also doing that) and Buntoine (I'll use the ship name just because they inevitably become one bland fused entity with no distinct individual traits of their own) is just there to be cute. If the two of them aren't together, then they're just animate set pieces that might say something stereotypically French or Southern every once in a while just to remind readers they're still present (someone being of a certain culture =/= a personality). 

Again -- why. Are. They. There? They're just side characters. I guess it's like Road Rover fics where Blitz, Exile, Shag, Muzzle, and the Master don't really ever do much of anything or even get pushed out of the picture, all so readers can focus on Hunter and Colleen getting married and having an American-style Presbyterian wedding or whatever. Sally absolutely needs Bunnie to always be her confidant and gal pal (sounds like when furry!Nicole debuted in Archie she shoved Bunnie out of that role though), while Rotor and Antoine (as well as Bunnie) need to be Sonic or whoever's personal cheer squad. Guess I shouldn't be surprised the fanfics are like this, given that the source material is the exact same way, with Archie original characters (Mina Mongoose, furry!Nicole, Fiona Fox, Larry Lynx, etc) coming in and getting the attention and focus that these three should've gotten. That's honest to God pretty sad.

I don't think the fanbase is genuinely interested in these characters as much as they just have a shallow attachment to them based on nostalgia. Like the three of them have been around since the cartoon aired back in 1993, so they can't imagine getting rid of them. One would think that if people actually did like these characters as characters that they'd try to play around with them more, instead of merely relegating them to supporting rules where they don't do much of anything/exist to be cannon fodder/or the universe's punching bag in Antoine's case.

I will say that I don't expect someone who doesn't like Antoine to sit down and write a whole subplot centered around him (in fact, probably not the best idea, given that countless fic writers just prefer to bash him). It'd be like someone coming up to me and asking me to write a SatAM or Archie-based story starring Sonic*/or Sally. I'd look them dead in the eye and tell them "No. I'd much rather take a rusty pen knife and try cutting off my own arm then ever do that, thanks."

*For what it's worth, I am currently working on my own concept for a Sonic AU that doesn't have anything to do with any pre-existing canon and in which Sonic is one of the main characters. But it's also going to be both my own improvements to and ideas for him as a character, so make of that what you will.

Apparently, there are only three kinds of stories that you should write about Antoine which are acceptable, according to some Antoine/Archie/SatAM fans. Those consist of him and Bunnie making endless kissy faces at each other, or bad soap operas (I feel positive that this is Archie's influence) where he can never catch any kind of break whatsoever and must be kept utterly miserable throughout the course of said story. If it's a story featuring an ensemble cast, then he needs to be bland generic hero #2,2207 who just hangs out in the background and a moving set piece. If you do anything with him that doesn't fit into either of those categories, even if it's just something like simply giving him a hobby or an interest of some kind, then you're making Antoine a Gary Stu or whatever and disrespecting canon. 🫤

My reaction:

Back when I was writing Knight Errand, I wanted to have Antoine interacting with Lupe, because I'd never seen that done anywhere before. I thought I'd share this idea with another Antoine "fan", thinking they'd be intrigued. Instead they told me that they shouldn't interact at all, because only Sally and Lupe have ever interacted in SatAM and the comics before, and Antoine would stay back unless he was called over. Never mind the fact that Sally wasn't even with Antoine when he and Lupe crossed paths, and the conceit of the entire story was Antoine getting out of his comfort zone. 

I'm extremely glad I totally disregarded this person and just went ahead and just wrote the Antoine/Lupe stuff. What's extra hilarious about all this is that they've never even bothered reading Knight Errand apparently. 

It just goes to show, folks -- don't listen to people who try to discourage you and tell you what you need to be writing. Just write whatever you want. These people are not paying your bills, they're not in any kind of position of authority over you (in spite of whatever delusions they may be harboring), they are not your friends, etc etc. You can safely ignore them. I'm going to share a story about that particular fan in another post, since it's ironically humorous.

I would much rather write a weird, experimental idea I'm excited about that gets zero engagement then force myself to write bland cookie cutter slop for three or so comments (because it isn't like Antoine-centric fics get a whole lot of attention in comparison to fics about other Sonic characters to begin with. I lucked out with KE, and I think that was just because it was a longer story).

That's not to mention the gigaton of fan art and stories out there bashing him and making Antoine into a crazed rapist/stalker/traitor/or something else extremely negative. The bizarre thing is, I've encountered a bunch of people who readily call themselves Antoine fans fall into these exact same traps. The aforementioned individual who I spoke to about KE briefly is one of these. I've seen a massive number of fics as well as this discontinued fan comic (speaking honestly, I'm glad it never went anywhere) where he'd get verbally eviscerated in public/or blown off by either Sally or Sonic, yet continued working alongside them and the other Freedom Fighters anyways because he has zero self-respect apparently. Or made into a homophobe. Or he's a hater towards some character the writer stans like Fiona or Scourge (I hate those two as much as I do Sally and co). Or you'll get a "reformed" Antoine who now spends his time constantly whining about how weak he used to be and need Sonic and Sally to constantly tell him what a big stwong bwave boy he is. Ugh. Fans consider this character development, a dull, generic good guy who can't let go of the past? I can see if he did this for a little bit, then went "Okay, I started on this path to self-improvement, and I need to continue." But that never happens. I've talked with a couple of these kinds of people before in the past, and I kinda suspect a bunch of them are extremely obsessed with making sure they stick to canon, which means no happiness or character development for Antoine ever, unless it either relates to being Bunnie and Sally's one-dimensional doormat or a punchline. So having him stand up to the others or even calling them out for their behavior was just out of the question.

There's also the ties between Sonic and neurodivergent people, and I have to wonder if that's another factor in play here with these kinds of folks. Though I'd like to point out that I'm also on the autism spectrum and don't act anything like them (incredibly weird, defensive, not the most emotionally stable). I can't sit up there and read the same story over and over and over again like they apparently can and enjoy it either. At worst, I just write long posts like this sperging on and on about my favorite characters lol.

There's also a number of minor things people do with his character in fanfiction and the like that I find very off-putting. It falls into the category of "Well, this is the reformed Antoine, but we can't think of any other way to include humor (I use that term very loosely)/or we still gotta get our licks in on him." These posts from Reddit are more than likely talking about different fandoms, but as soon as I read them I went "Yep, that's the exact same garbage I see in Sonic fandom.":

"Undercover character bashing. Where someone is ostensibly one of the protagonists and good guys in the story, but the author and the other characters are just constantly s******* on them. It’s usually presented in a, “oh, that character, what a dumb**** who can’t do anything right, but we love him and he’ll learn better one day. He’s so lucky to have all these people in his life to repeatedly tell him he f***** up and make him feel like s*** for not being able to figure out how on his own.” 

"Stories where the author is obsessed with characters "teasing" a character constantly about x relationship or about something that is disparaging the character and making them seem less or incompetent. It's not funny, it's annoying as f*** and it ends up being 90% of the dialogue. It happens in so many fics and it's annoying. Why do they have to constantly be bullying the character over x s***? It's frustrating and sucks the enjoyment I was getting out of an otherwise good fic."

So yeah. When it comes to platonic relationships for Antoine, I feel the same way about the matter that I do about Esteban. At this point I'd much rather have him around different characters than the other Knothole Freedom Fighters, in part because I want to explore interesting new character dynamics, and in part because Antoine gets held back as a character by them, in addition to often being treated poorly by them (and never receiving any kind of apology from them for this once he's stopped being cowardly and is supposedly now friends with them). And if I do write a story where he's with them all as a group, then that story is going to be critical of Sonic and the others (Knight Errand, Predatory Drift, other upcoming stuff). Sorry. *shrugs* There are tons upon tons of stories out there where this is not the case. I would strongly suggest you go read those if you don't like what I'm doing here. Clicking the back button is not some Herculean task. Put your microwave burrito down and try it, it's as easy as 1, 2, 3!

Some fans talk about Antoine like he's less a cartoon/comic character and more of this dark entity that can somehow influence literal reality, like Satan or a Lovecraftian being or something. What I mean when I say this is that I have seen people discuss how Antoine was written in Archie versus how Sally was approached -- Antoine somehow made the writers approach him the way they did, so that's why he's a bad character. Sally? Well, the writers intentionally wrote her badly (i.e.: the infamous Slap) to make her look unpopular! That's why the writers (and Antoine I guess) are evil! 

Man, and here my goofy butt thought all Antoine was was just a funny animal character from a mediocre cartoon/comic all this time. The internet's great for learning new things! 

I swear on my life I saw and read this somewhere. IIRC it was either on Tumblr or deviantART (BTW, there was this guy on the Elena Of Avalor sub spouting that same "the show writers are purposefully trying to make my favorite character look bad!" line about Elena, that particular series' Princess Sally).

More greatest hits from Sonic fans: I was told once by somebody I used to speak to off and on that because Sonic and Sally had experienced difficult and even traumatic childhoods, that was okay for them to treat Antoine the way they do/did. So going by that logic, whenever someone who was hurt goes on to hurt somebody else, then it's fine because their trauma excuses them. So what about Antoine? He was separated from his family as well and more then likely has PTSD, but I guess that doesn't matter because he's not a main character? That's frankly a really incredibly childish, narrow-minded way to view that situation. Way too many of y'all out there are obsessed with your favorite characters (not just in Sonic, but in a bunch of other fandoms I could name) to a degree that I'd readily describe as being unhinged. Uncomfortable even. Like fans will literally crash out if it's so much as slightly suggested that certain characters face any sort of accountability or be called out for their actions at any point. How far are people willing to take that? If Sonic and Sally bombed a school bus with children on it, I guess their backgrounds would also excuse that then? Stupid kids. Why were they on that bus to begin with? Sonic and Sally never went to school!

"Antoine is ugly!" *shrugs* I always thought he just looks like a cute little cartoony dog myself (and since this is the internet and a bunch of people are gooner-brained, when I say "cute", I don't mean I wanna bang him or whatever). He doesn't look any stranger than anybody else in the cast to me. But we are discussing a fandom where people think Sonic himself is sexy and the single most desirable being on Mobius (and the Archie comics constantly pushed him as such), so... Move over Michael B. Jordan, Paul Newman, nothing says hot like a funny animal character that has a giant single eyeball with two pupils rolling around in it and Betty Spaghetti arms! 

I will say I don't like what Tony's design ended up evolving into in the comics, with that hot dog nose and weird-looking cheek fringe. Or his design in the NWG setting. I've seen a modern redesign done for him that would've been way more appealing. Or they could've made him look something like Infinite. Infinite's got a great character design!

Guess it's time to discuss the subject of Antoine and his love life. When I was younger, I was so excited about him and Bunnie getting together. Finally, he could be with somebody who'd love and accept him for who he was and vice verse, they could help one another grow, all that good stuff. But as I grew older and started not only seeing how a lot of Buntoine fans act, but actually further reflecting on this ship as well as each character, this was my response:

  
For starters, it isn't a relationship between equals. Bunnie just gets glorified constantly by the fanbase for very shallow reasons ("Cool sexy Southern cyborg rabbit who has rockets and punches stuff!"), while Antoine just exists as an accessory for her and her emotional support animal whenever she gets emo about being a cyborg. Another post from Reddit says it the best: "When one half of a couple is serious, intelligent, and/or very competent, while the other is played for goofy comic relief, constantly loses their dignity, can't do anything right, and is generally just kinda stupid... In my opinion, the best relationships are between people who are equals: They need to be complements for each other and be able to be on the same page and wavelength. If they aren't, it makes me feel as if the smart, competent one is way out of the goofy, stupid, inept one's league and that they're a complete mismatch."

She cheated on him with Sonic of all people (yep, our heroes ladies and gentlemen, such a great, totally not at all dysfunctional group!). Fanon and canon both act like that never happened. I haven't forgotten. It just makes me feel even more justified in writing non-canon romances for Antoine. I have more stuff to say about how grating Buntoine shippers are, but I'll save it for a big post I have planned discussing why I hate shippers in general.

Why is one of their kids a cyborg too? That's just so lazy. And the fankids are just as boring and bad. 

Now, am I saying that every single person on the planet who likes Buntoine is just this crappy person? No. There are perfectly normal, chill ones out there I'm sure. But unfortunately, the obnoxious people outnumber the normal people, and are more vocal and obsessive as well. 

At the same time though, the people who hate this ship are just insufferable as the folks who obsess over it are.

"Falling in love with Antoine made Bunnie a worse character!" Okay Bunnie stans, then why we try a little something here, the Mr. Plinkett character test? Here we go -- describe Bunnie's character without mentioning any of the following:

- Appearance

- Skills (or in this case, her abilities)

- Plot relevance

- Relationships

Just tell me what her personality was like prior to her getting with Antoine. No headcanons, nothing from your fanfiction or somebody else's fic, just what was presented in the canon.

I also used to know someone who said that they hated Antoine as well as his and Bunnie getting together because they were hoping she'd end up with Tails instead.😟 Now, I don't know if this guy meant Tails once he got older, but even so, that still means you'd have this young woman waiting for some kid she seems to have helped partially raise to get older just so she can start dating him. If you don't think that's messed up and gross, switch their genders around. Does that still sound normal to you?

Many of the anti-Buntoine people also seem to lack the same amount of outrage towards the idea of pairing Bunnie off with female characters like Sally in what feels like the blatant fetishization of lesbian couples. But that can't be the reason, can it? 🤔

To date I've only met only one person who wasn't big on Buntoine (and it wasn't even that she disliked it, just that she couldn't see it occurring outside of Archie) but actually acted completely normal about it. Like she didn't rush in raging and carrying on like Antoine had stolen Bunnie from her (a lot of the animosity towards the ship feels like that, literal grown men jealous of a cartoon character for "taking" their cartoon crush 🙄) or something. Don't understand why that's so hard for everybody else. 

Sonic fans try not to be overbearing, socially inept weirdos challenge (impossible).

Pairing Antoine with Sally or Sonic?

 

"Okay, so who would you put with Antoine then, you big crybaby?" 

Well, lemme just say that in my main universe, Guardians Of Acorn, he ultimately gets together with Leeta. Years ago I drew a pic of him wooing both her and her twin (of course some Buntoine shippers got triggered 😂), and like the idea of him getting together with one of them (though I had to give both actual personalities). I think even in a SatAM-adjacent setting pairing him with Leeta could be pretty interesting to write about. I also think Antoine and Elias would be a really interesting couple. It's ironic because Tony does end up with an Acorn, just not Sally. I'd be pretty intrigued if anybody ever actually sat down and wrote a solid fanfic for this coupling instead of just making a few pieces of fan art for it. I once knew somebody who suggested a Shadow and Antoine pairing. Their reasoning was that Antoine would remind him of Maria because of the blonde hair. I thought "That's some pretty shallow reasoning", but brainstorming a plot for how a relationship between the two of them could begin and play out sounds like a pretty fun challenge to me. Of course you've got good OCs as perfectly viable options for Tony as well. My last choice is a character whose identity I'll keep as a surprise, because I'm currently working on the story featuring them and Antoine. I'm sure it'll throw a bunch of people for a loop.

But there you have it. All that is why I barely look at Sonic fan art. Aside from a scant few exceptions here and there (AU stuff), I do not read fanfic for this fandom anymore either. I don't visit Sonic-related Tumblr. There were one or two Archie/SatAM critical blogs that I agreed with before they veered straight off into wild toxicity and character bashing. I told a friend that even when you're not in the fandom the fanbase is still exhausting to witness. Anything Antoine-related there meanwhile is just insipid Buntoine shipping. I don't visit Sonic forums or roleplay it. I just avoid anything Sonic, including the fans and especially Antoine "fans", and do my own thing. Whatever I put out there into cyberspace, people can take it or leave it.

Well, there are a scant few fans who I actually do enjoy speaking with, but the only one I'm in contact with right now is Spiral Writer. I don't know what happened to Dukect. There was a third person, but she's been gone for a long time now. The other individual's over on Instagram, and that's not exactly a platform conducive for conversation. The last party doesn't seem to have an online presence anymore and wants to preserve her privacy, so I will respect her wishes.

Please, go ahead and tell me that Antoine was super well developed, ackshually, and I'm just too stupid and ugly to realize it/don't have a man/I didn't read all 700 issues of the comic/didn't read issue #496 story "The Ill-Made Hedgehog" that featured Antoine baking Sonic and Sally a quiche in the background of one panel or what the heck ever. I don't care. 

The followup entry to this post will be more upbeat because I get to discuss my version of Antoine. 

My official stance on drama

When I say "drama", I'm referring to situations where people are trying to start something with me/or someone else (or have done so in the past). But I've decided I'm not going to talk about that kind of stuff on here, with two exceptions: 

1) It's something related to my writing. For example, there's a Disney AU story I have planned that unfortunately would have never come about without somebody who I eventually ended up having to cut ties with. So it's kind of part of the history of how the whole concept came to exist in the first place. 

2) Someone is seriously smearing my name (like accusing me of something serious, i.e. pedophilia, since that's like the go-to accusation people love slinging around online these days), and I don't have any choice but to come with receipts and defend myself.

Outside of those things though, I will not be giving any attention to toxic people. There's a saying that goes "don't feed the alligators, because all you'll end up with is bigger alligators."

July 2025 status report

I'm going to be shutting down my Buzzly account eventually, just because it's not a good idea to have a bunch of unused accounts just floating around the internet. I plan to do the same for my original deviantART account, though I need to go through my favorites there first so I can fave them for the current dA account (which is also no longer in use, as in I quit posting to it some years back).  

The nature of the online art community is so... dead (on top of all the other problems present). Like nobody replies to anything anymore unless you're a super popular artist, and people are just really unfriendly in general nowadays. I don't think that's purely a dA or Buzzly thing either, I just think that's an online art community thing. Makes me pretty happy that my primary focus for all these years has been on my writing, as opposed to art.

But I will be setting up shop over on Pillowfort. I'll I'll drop a link here once it's active, but I'm going to wait until I've drawn some new stuff. I've been wanting to practice sketching my newly revamped Road Rovers OCs lately.

Meanwhile, in writing related news...

New Dogs, New Tricks: Maybe 95% finished? I'm hoping to have the rough draft for this bad boy finished by either this month or the next. So close!

Still doing a lot of brainstorming for both original and fan stuff (namely STARS, Sonic The Hedgehog, a Friendship Is Magic/Disney crossover that's actually one of the two fic ideas referenced in my last update here, and a webcomic called Cloudscratcher).

The Character Corner: Blitz, Part 2

"Mirror mirror, on the wall, who's the fairest one of all?" 

(You are king, you are. 😆)

(There was a person named Loo who'd come through every now and then to comment on posts both here early on and at the old blog. Loo, if you happen to be reading this, you seem to be a Blitz fan like myself, so I hope you've been enjoying my write-up on the character!)

INSPIRATION

Primarily me, myself, and I. 😋 To be frank I find most Blitz fans' headcanons about him (which are pretty rare to see anyways; people don't really bother trying to dig into his character any) to not be my cup of tea, to politely put it. Not interested in giving him an abusive dad; for some reason for this type of character, people love giving them an abusive parent(s). At this point I just find it tired and trite. Fans never do this to the popular characters. I will say Evil Writer had a couple of ideas for his backstory that I really like, but ended up putting my own particular twist on because I don't have all the details for how a certain event would actually go down in his setting, and deciding that I really don't want to be restrained by another person's headcanon. Lilikoi, another former Road Rovers crossover fan writer, also had a few ideas that I like and borrowed for my interpretation of Blitz.

He's yet another Rover who's just one big question mark. Aside from a couple of very surface-level minor things in the show (that are more jokes than anything else), we learn absolutely nothing about him either. He used to be a guard dog at a junkyard (?) in Berlin, Germany. That's literally all we were shown. That mysteriousness gets me a lot more interested in exploring what his past could've been like before he became a Road Rover, and how that past still could affect him in the present day.

I've seen a tiny handful of people create relatives for him, but have never really liked any of them due to their being given really stupid names for some reason, or, like I said above, it was just the played out abusive daddy trope or something in that vein. Most of them were incidental characters as well I believe. Either that, or I just don't know anything about them beyond them having names I dislike. So I just made up my own family members for him. Evil Writer also created an OC who was an adopted brother for Blitz, but I'm trying to decide if he should debut in the first generation stories or show up in the next gen stuff that I have planned.

FUTURE PLANS

Oh, so, so many.

After having written the first half of this character write-up, I feel confident in stating that I have finalized what I'll be doing with Blitz's love life. It'll be controversial, and for now I'm keeping mum about it.

I find it kind of interesting how in "Gold And Retrievers" Blitz was pretty dismissive towards the idea of Luca saying that he sees the future. And it's like "But you've seen werewolves before my guy." I think this is an interesting idea for his character: just being very cynical towards the idea of the supernatural (in general however I just feel he's someone of a pretty cynical nature). In my setting, the STARS-verse, there are other, very blatantly supernatural elements, in addition to werewolves and prophetic dreams like what Luca has, and I do intend to have Blitz have his worldview be challenged by the existence of these things. Which ties into my next point (sort of):

So what's going to be the catalyst for Blitz's beginning to turn over a new leaf and start becoming a more mature, reflective person here? Well, let's just say he gets by with a little help from from a (new) friend. Again, I'm not going to go into detail about this until I actually start working on the fic featuring this plot development as well as said new character, which'll be after my current on-going story New Dogs, New Tricks. It's working title is Straying Stars.

This new connection will give Blitz's character the opportunity to go to entirely new places and do amazing stuff that he'd never get to do in canon. Again, not just the self-improvement stuff, but other things that I'm going to hold off on discussing for now.

But I believe introducing OCs who could have interactions with Blitz that aren't constantly antagonistic in nature is something that could be used to further expand upon his character.

All of the following ideas are ones EW told me he had in mind, but were never actually written up and posted anywhere or anything. I think they're really awesome, so my intent is to take them and put my own spin on them for the STARS-verse. Now, let me state this upfront due to the dA branch of the Road Rovers fandom's lack of knowledge and awareness concerning anything outside their own echo chambers -- this is a very common practice within fandoms outside of Road Rovers. It is fine and dandy just as long as you credit the originator of the ideas. I am not "plagiarizing" anybody because all I was ever told about was a blurb about these ideas. 

Anyways, speaking of antagonism, there are going to be at least two stories focusing on his and Colleen's relationship. Will they ever quash their beef? Well, just stick around and see. One of these fics will be about Blitz just suddenly up and vanishing one day after walking into HQ not just looking but also acting strangely. It'll have a noire-ish tone to it. 

In another story, after ending up in a scrape and getting a little knock on the head, Blitz develops amnesia and runs afoul of a villain who convinces him that the Rovers are really bad guys -- and it's Blitz's job to stop them.

He's also going to be encountering somebody who gradually becomes an archenemy of his -- somebody he's actually met before. Though since I don't want to make this situation a retread of what happened with Exile and his own personal nemesis Hacker (who I mentioned all the way back in Exile's Character Corner write-up), it's going to be handled differently.

HEADCANON 

Before we start, I need to lay out yet more important info for Road Rover fans who might be wondering what a headcanon is. This is taken from Merriam-Webster's dictionary: "headcanon is something that a fan imagines to be true about a character, even though no information supporting that belief is spelled out in the text." 

So basically it's just theorizing for fun.

1.) Firstly, I do not perceive him to be some sort of brutish monster who doesn't care about the welfare or wellbeing of other creatures. Yeah, he may not automatically consider everybody else's feelings from the word go, but he has swallowed his pride and apologized for being wrong in the show twice ("Storm On The Pacific", and I wanna say another episode IIRC...). Again, if he was all these awful things, then why was he chosen to be a Rover in the first place, and why would he keep on doing it? Wouldn't he just quit? Or just go join the villains?

Make it make sense, haters.

2.) At the start of my storyverse, Blitz is a ripe old nineteen in human years. Initially he was a year older then Hunter because I was using the ages that EW gave them in his setting, but then I thought "Let's have the both of them swap ages." Then "Let's drop Blitz's age!", just because nineteen-year olds tend to be pretty stupid and dickish. That's all Blitz's issue is. He's not the Antichrist or Hitler reincarnated like people would have you believe. In universe, a lot of people are surprised that he's actually as young as he is. 

"Really?" I can hear you say incredulously. "He's pretty big for a nineteen year old!"

Brother/sister, have you seen some of these high school-age kids out here? Some of them look like they work 9 to 5s and own their own houses. 

So most of his immaturity I simply chalk up to his youth. Larger dog breeds also take longer to fully mature compared to smaller ones. The older he gets, the more he calms down. Viewing his behavior in the show through the lens of a young dog trying to push boundaries and test his limits and the older dogs getting irritated with him as a result is not only interesting, but lines up with actual dog behavior. My making him the youngest of the canon Rovers also factors into his feelings towards Hunter, who I have as being a whole six years older than Blitz. This mutt from Burgerland sitting up here and bossing him around like he's his dad or something would definitely stick in Blitz's craw. XD

3.) I think a lot of the guys in this fandom maybe either don't have or aren't familiar with the types of friendships that average guys (read: not, well, super-dorky or solitary types) have with one another. Men love to give other men crap. I've seen numerous posts and comments from men saying that that's how they show affection towards each other, believe it or not. I've witnessed this in real life. So that's why I don't think Exile hates Blitz or vice versa. He just likes busting his balls. In my ficverse I have Blitz busting his balls right back, because again, if he's also engaging in this, then it feels less one-sided.

"Well, that's actually called bullying, you know!"

Listen, I'm not a guy. All I'm doing is just pointing out that this is something men actually do. I am not saying it's right or wrong either way. It's just a thing. It felt right for my approach to Blitz and Exile's dynamic, so I use it.

Hmm... you're looking a little flushed there, dear reader. Maybe you should go get yourself a cool glass of water?

4.) I will emphasize this again: Blitz is not sexist or hates women. There’s absolutely nothing in the show pointing to that. It’s just stupid fanon. It's hella weird when people turn him into Frollo from the Disney Hunchback Of Notre Dame movie and have him be sexually obsessed with Colleen. I feel like if stuff ever got to that extreme with him, then he'd either go to the Master and talk to him about it, or just take it upon himself to find a girlfriend back home or something. It just seems like a bunch of people out there project their strange personal issues and fantasies onto these characters (then shamelessly advertise it to you because they see you also are interested in the show. Stop it, please 😒).

5.) Yeah, so Blitz is not a bully. When I think of bullies in fiction, I think of characters like Jimbo Jones from The Simpsons, or Katsuki Bakugo in My Hero Academia before his character undergoes development, or Regina George (Mean Girls). I don't believe the couple of times that Blitz calls Shag "Mop Boy" or says Muzzle is crazy ("Storm On The Pacific") he's doing it to be malicious and make them feel bad. I think Blitz just says whatever pops into Blitz's mind. He has no filter. Now, if he was continually harassing or humiliating Shag or whoever, then yeah, I would say he was a bully then. 

If anything, I feel like Blitz is the one who gets bullied at times by certain other characters. 😐

6.) He detests being seen crying.

7.) Aside from plain ol' immaturity, a major component of Blitz's issues stem from from what's known as toxic shame. A YouTube channel I follow has a great video here discussing what toxic shame is. It's best summed up there like this: it's the pervasive belief that you are not enough and will never be enough, so you must work endlessly to keep that terrible truth a secret from everybody else. Now I personally don't believe Blitz is a full-on narcissist, but he could very easily turn into one if he doesn't learn how to accept his flaws and address his toxic shame directly.

8.) One of the things he's ashamed about is not having proper dobie markings. If you'll look at his design, he lacks the "socks" black and tan dobermans usually have.

9.) This is an idea of Lilikoi's: "I don’t think Blitz would be someone who likes pranks, if I can be honest. Like no matter who was behind it, I think they’d just annoy him."

10.) At the start of my fics he’ll have dialed back his antagonizing of Hunter as well as his bragging (somewhat), but is at a loss as to how to go about improving his relationship with Hunter and the other Alphas.

11.) His official team position at the start of my series is Close Combat and Infiltration.

12.) I've kept his love of mint as a character trait. I never understood the whole "Eew peppermint milkshakes lol!" joke in the show. I love minty desserts myself -- and often get the same reaction Blitz does, lol. Blitz also likes frankfurters and liverwurst.

13.) Blitz is one of the odd domestic animals who's actually kind of into naturism and doesn't care about or is bothered by nudity (in real life Europeans aren't bothered by nudity like many Americans tend to be anyways). Don't worry, I'm not going to get weird with this. [Again for the deviantART branch of the fandom -- DON'T COME AT ME BEING GROSS AND HORNY ABOUT THIS. Leave me the hell alone, I do not share in your creepy-ass fetishes.]

14.) Most of the OFCs in the STARS-verse either like Blitz or just have a normal person's reaction to his antics and such. They'll roll their eyes or laugh at him, but it's not the over-the-top homicidal rage and severe bullying that a majority of other fans love to have their OFCs exhibit towards him. Again, I feel like if things ever got to that point, other characters and even the Master would step in and restore order. There are certain characters who just outright dislike him, but that's to be expected.

15.) Blitz is touch starved, although this is something he would never admit to.

16.) I've chanced across several online sources describing European dobermans as being of a more nervous and neurotic nature then their American counterparts, though this seems to ultimately vary from individual to individual. Here's one such link discussing it. Maybe this could partly explain why Blitz is the way he is. But I've also heard American dobies be described as shy, timid, and not that great at physical activities like schutzhund. I wouldn't doubt if bias for or against a particular type plays a part in the inconsistencies of these accounts. One consistency I did keep coming across though is that European dobies are supposed to be working dogs as opposed to show dogs, so they are bigger and more muscular then the American type is.

17.) I've (mostly) given his family Christmas-related names. Blitz's parents are Vixen and Dasher, and his littermates are Dancer (male), Prancer (female), Cupid (male), Star (male), Rudy (Rudolph; male), Nutmeg (female), and Nicky (male; a reference to St. Nicholas). Dancer and Prancer are from a prior litter, so they are the eldest sibs. "Wait, what about Comet and Donner?" Ah, I'm keeping those two names in reserve for now. ;)

Now, the following is Evil Writer's headcanon: Blitz is actually the runt. Due to this, his brothers, with the exception of Prancer, who was more mature then they were and doted on all of his younger sibs (his sister Dancer was the same way) often picked on Blitz. No, their parents didn't allow this to just happen. If they were present and spotted Blitz's littermates starting in on him then they would step in and stop it, but they were busy parents and couldn't be everywhere all the time. So, sick and tired of being the underdog (hurr hurr), Blitz started training himself to become tough enough to fight back. As he grew he got bigger and stronger, though his brothers are still bigger dogs than he is.

18.) I noticed Blitz was sorely lacking in buddies in my setting, and really wanted to fix that for STARS. In general I feel that in many fandoms platonic friendship is neglected (often in favor of shipping), especially Road Rovers. While I do have him and Exile as being friends, I also wanted to expand his circle and give him some more pals closer to him in age. Aside from the aforementioned mystery OC mentioned earlier, I decided to throw my trio of OCs Storm, Shiwa, and Venoli (yes, we will be learning more about them later) into the mix as well. The three of them are misfits as well, so they know what it's like to get looked down on. There'll be a fifth OC as well, though I'm not sure if I should give away her identity right now or not. She is making her debut in New Dogs, I can say that much.

19.) Out of all the Alpha Rovers he is the most health conscious. He tries his best to eat right (although being a dog, there are times where he slips up and indulges in junk food), and if possible, will exercise on a daily basis for at least two hours. Even at his master's home he tries to adhere to this.

20.) Because of his past as a watchdog, he has a tendency to be more active at night and sleep during the day. 

21.) I admit to not being a fan of Greywolf Lupous' take on Blitz even though she gave him a love interest (Huntress). Blitz was an out, loud, and proud chauvinist in her stories, and I just don't think that's in his nature (nor do I understand how Hunter would be okay with his sister being with somebody who was like that in the first place). Further ruminating on it, I don't really even get the Blitz/Huntress pairing. I don't remember reading any fic that featured them being romantic, getting to know one another better, or even making any offhand mention of them being an item. The whole thing just seemed to be an afterthought. I remember seeing one story that revealed Huntress as having a kid named Duke in the conclusion, who I assume was Blitz's son, but Blitz was entirely absent from the scene. So I don't know was it even actually his kid or not. 

So I'd rather just do my own take on Blitz's love life, because at least then I can come up with the how and the why and then show them actually interacting together. For STARS, I treat Blitz and Huntress' relationship as "lust at first sight", and in Huntress' case, a way to show Hunter that he doesn't have a say in who she dates. Dating a dude he has beef with is just an extra bonus point. Personally, I've always found Hunter's behavior towards Huntress in Greywolf's stories to be pretty overbearing and controlling, and want to tackle that here.

Going back to Huntress and Blitz, they like and have fun with each other, but in the long run, both come to realization that there really isn't a whole lot of substance to their relationship. 

"How dare you disrespect Greywolf like this, OLU!" 

I'm not disrespecting her. I don't have any beef with her and have never met her before (everything I saw from her back when I'd just joined the fandom suggests that she'd grown fed up with both it and the entitled behavior of a number of other fans. A very understandable sentiment). All I'm saying is that I don't get the point of the Huntress/Blitz coupling because it didn't seem to affect the characters or anything else (unless there was some fic somewhere that I never saw), and it won't be a permanent thing here here. My fics occur in a totally separate setting from her's anyways.

22.) I noticed a few writers will have Blitz swear more than the other Rovers do. I have complicated feelings on swearing within stories in general, but I personally don't believe he'd swear any more than anybody else would. 

23.) I devised some hobbies for him in order to punch him out as a character: weightlifting, staying fit in general, "tushie biting" (his words), European auto racing, soccer, watching TV and movies, hanging out with his buddies, and swimming. He's also a gearhead, being into flashy sports and muscle cars. This next interest was actually partially inspired by EW -- like many a male dog, he has a tendency to wander. 

Also, I really wanna give him a skill that he's too embarrassed to show off  -- nothing gross or inappropriate, but just something not commonly associated with masculinity. 

PERSONAL

Let me just say that while I do really like Blitz as a character, I don't believe that I'd actually put him on a formal list of favorite fictional characters of mine's. Like, he would not be up there with Caesar from the new Planet Of The Apes movies, or the Android from the series Dark Matters, or Prowl from Transformers Animated (hey, another Jeff Bennett character!), and that's sadly because he was pretty underdeveloped in the show. It's the same thing with Antoine from Sonic The Hedgehog. There's just not enough there to feel a real strong connection to (at least with how he was presented in the show). I do like Blitz because I think a ton of people out there are extremely unfair to him, he has a few cool moments under his belt, and what he could have been with better writing though. He's a literal underdog, and I've always had a soft spot for those types.

I am planning on giving Road Rovers a rewatch at some point however...

Even with the scant few attempts in fanfics at giving him a more sympathetic and nuanced portrayal that I've seen, it's almost always a two steps forward, two steps back deal. Or it's the kind of stuff I discussed in the last post, where the character is named Blitz but really isn't him, and the writer just tosses all the lore and everything else having to do with the show out the window. Or it just plays up the show's goofiness and blandness (while adding in fetish material). I saw one story that looked potentially interesting, but then it threw in a particular OC that I can't stand, so I dipped. 

I've also seen one or two things where the writer wanted to develop him, but still had the stance of "Well, he just needs to learn how to tolerate and accept the quirks of the other characters (basically, what was the bad/or extremely unpleasant behavior of these characters, though the writer didn't seem to realize they'd fallen into this trap)", or how he just needs to learn the true meaning of being a Road Rover. 

Um, what does he need to learn exactly? What is that true meaning then? Because I don't think Hunter knows what it is... Again, go watch the show. He does help out the team. It's just that barely anybody wants to acknowledge when he does, but then blow up all of his mistakes. As you can tell, I've really grown to not care at all for "Blitz dislikes X but changes his mind after learning to tolerate X" type plotlines and try to avoid them. Instead, I would rather have both him and his BFF/or love interest learn and grow together as individuals, instead of just putting the impetus solely on Blitz's shoulders.

In short, I want to have my boy earn his happy ending and have him be around people who give him respect and kindness. I know I can't control people's feelings regarding Blitz. I can only hope that my fics help paint him in a different light, in the way myself and the one other person out there who likes him as a character (and not just fetish fuel*) view him. 

*While I loathe the whole "you're not a real fan of this or that if you don't act this way or do this specific thing I want you to do!" mentality that certain kinds of fans have, there is one exception I have to this. If you say you like a character, but that like seems to wholly boil down to how they give you a funny feeling in your pants, or you make them completely unrecognizable in your fan works or whatever, without showing exactly why and how they changed in the first place, then no, I don't think you're really a fan of the character. *shrugs*

"Tch, you're so arrogant/hypocrital, OLU!"

Same warning from my last post still stands: this is all just for fun/airing out my thoughts. I'm not going to put up with any RR fans' bs. I'm just going to block you if you come on here trying to come for me.