The Sonic the Hedgehog Headcanon Thread of Lore and Time Stones

Late reply. Sorry, I had left this for later and eventually forgot.

I know all that. I know that both depictions had anthros and humans, but with different ratios. And I know splitting them into two worlds is unnecessary. I've always been opposed to Iizuka's two worlds depiction.

No one is saying that humans didn't exist in western depictions or anthros didn't exist in Japanese ones. After all, the hero is an anthro while the villain is a human.

But they're still clashing depictions of Sonic's world that are hard to consolidate. Archie specifically depicted the world as dominated by anthros, with humans/overlanders being a minority. By contrast, Sonic Adventure depicted them as commonplace, with human cities being nothing out of the norm.

That was the very reason Archie made Station Square a hidden city in the SA1 adaptation. In fact, one of the responses in the letters section said that it was either that or putting it in another dimension, as the idea of a large modern human city was just incompatible with Archie's depiction of Sonic's world. So yes, the existence of Station Square in SA1 did contradict Archie, according to Archie itself.

SatAM similarly operated under the logic that humans were extremely rare, and its bible stated that they had gone extinct and been replaced by anthros, with Robotnik and Snively being abnormalities due to having been away from the planet while the extinction took place.

SatAM and Archie didn't depict Sonic as visiting a faraway kingdom. They depicted him as being part of that kingdom. He was raised and lived there all his life. The latter also depicted him as taking orders from Sally and often having to run things under her before taking action. A far cry from the games' more independent guy who is always on the move living by his own instincts and is irreverent to rules and authority.

I mean, I get what you're trying to say. That if they adapted the Freedom Fighters into the games, they could alter them to fit with the game universe, making the Kingdom of Acorn just a place Sonic visits in that adventure and has no direct ties with. But then I feel the fact such changes are necessary strengthens the argument that the American material is fundamentally different from the games/Japanese canon.

 

First, the reason Archie did that was plot-induced, not just about humanity. Humans were never treated as being absent or extinct, they all fucked-off into space because Robotnik helped the Acorns win the war. The SA1 change wasn't about the existence of humans, but explaining why they were benevolent to the heroes, and why Sonic in SA1 is running around a normal city. The humans had a huge, not just modern but technologically-advanced city that was built on the ruins of New York.

Second, I still think cumulatively that between all JP and western material this is incredibly weak to judge as defining each side of the franchise's depictions of the world, especially from the perspective of the people making it who would know what actually does and doesn't count for accuracy in that regard anyway. Sonic's world in X doesn't even necessarily exclude humans! There are humans in the space arc who aren't from Earth's dimension. These supposedly-clashing depictions are simply too similar in their totality for it to be feasible that X would constitute an attempt to consolidate them -- especially when the much simpler explanation is right there. The dichotomy in X makes it feel more different from every prior Sonic depiction than any of them do from each other.

Third...it's not really a consolidation! They keep them entirely separate and never explore the one that's supposed to be there for the US crowd. There just isn't a thread that really connects the old western adaptations and X unless you really stretch what counts as a human or animal-dominant world, and it's just kind of insane to me to suggest that the confluence of these would be the reasoning behind an entire show's premise instead of the much easier conclusion, which was that they wanted an easy way to introduce Sonic and friends and for kids to relate to the show, and two worlds was a fast-track to that. If they wanted to somehow pay respect or market to older fans of western adaptations, two worlds isn't just unnecessary or overboard, it simply doesn't accomplish that in any way. Why would anyone, on staff or in the fandom, get onboard with something for the mention of the presence of a world wherein anthropomorphic characters are somewhat more common than humans, only for that to be less than four percent of the show and not even look like any of the old things its supposedly a homage to anyway? It just assumes so much confusing bone-headed decision making to say this was how they got the idea.

EDIT: Also I'm getting kind of delirious reading back through the archives of this argument from almost two months ago. I'm just now noticing that right at the start was blackhole very plainly saying that X took inspiration from older two worlds stuff on-purpose, but then you redirected that to say "no, that's not what he's saying", (yes it is?) "they just took the idea of there being a contrast and then coincidentally extrapolated that into the exact same idea anyway"? And what I've been arguing is that that contrast is really poorly-defined and also not specific enough to any one region across the franchise as a whole for that to feel plausible as an inspiration, let-alone anything they possibly could have done on purpose for casting a wide appeal, because Sonic X is so clearly uninterested in anything but the immediate interplay between its central cast and exactly one of its two worlds. You may as well not have depicted the other one at all. The function is only for Sonic and friends to be from there and for Earth conventions to be unfamiliar to them, it could have been friggin' Krypton for all the difference it makes.

 

I think this discussion is dragging too much.

My point is simply this: western depictions were predominantly anthro-based, with humans being a minority. That's why there was a lot of culture shock among western fans when SA1 came out.

Getting technical about stuff like like "Archie's humans weren't absent, they were just... away from Sonic's world" (which I'd argue is still being absent) or "There were still humans in Sonic's dimension in Sonic X... in other planets" is being unable to see the forest for the trees.

Matter of fact is, western fans saw Sonic's world as being anthro-dominated, with humans not being commonplace, from the depictions they were shown. It wasn't until SA1 came out that that popular view changed.

In the dual world model, the anthro world is close to one popular view of Sonic's world, with the human world being close to the other. Was it done to "consolidate" the opposite fan views? Maybe, maybe not. Arguing why they must have done it is pointless, as we can't know for sure until Iizuka or someone specifically tells us.

 

I don't think that "many fans saw it this way" is a good argument as to what SEGA and Sonic Team's decision-making process was though, especially since we know they routinely ignored both western adaptations and fan perceptions, but at the very least we can assume they probably had access to the material itself, which would provide less of a misconception.

Any my point is that up until now your position seemed to be that it was plausible that this was why they did it that way (piggybacking off blackhole's statement that they just straight-up lifted the idea from old US material), and...I don't think that's true! No "maybe"s required, both of these just seem like absurd things to speculate. I don't know their reasoning behind a lot of decisions, but I would still say that's wrong even if I can't prove a negative. I keep harping on the narrative reason because...that's the one that actually serves a function in the show!

 

Then I guess at this point we'll just have to agree to disagree, because I don't see that as an impossibility. And like you said, you can't prove a negative.

 

I felt like it was pretty obvious that the reason they introduced "two worlds" was because human npc's were associated with the plot-heavy games, and at that time they wanted to move away from that and have simpler stories. I mean, between colors and forces, they didn't just have no human npc's, they didnt have mobian npc's either. But i guess this is also speculation on my part.

To shift topics slightly, what's the preferred ratio between Anthro-Animal, Regular Animals (froggy), Non-Speaking-But-Still-Anthro Animals (flicky, cucky, ricky, so on), Giant Photo Realistic Animals (that orca, the snake from forces), Humans, and Furry-like humans (Sara).

My preference, like say if there was some kind of open world sonic game where you could talk to npc's: Anthro Animals should be the minority, like maybe 10-15 %. Every anthro should have a name/unique design, and some "gimmic" about them whether its a gameplay thing or just an aesthetic. There shouldn't really be large crowds of anthro's, if you are making an "animal town" type of area then it should be treated more like an animal crossing village there there is just like 8 dudes there but they walk around a lot so it feels busier. I'd make an exception for cities with only one species of anthro, I'd be ok with them being more crowded/having some generic npc's, like the echidna city. idk why, that just feels different to me.

If you need perfectly generic npc's just to fill out a city scene, I think they should just be humans. Some humans would have names and side quests and stuff, but most of them would just be for filler. I'd also mix in some humans-with-animal-features in there, i think it's charming. They wouldnt be treated any differently, some npc's would just have an aesthetic quirk.

It's a little odd to have anthro animals and regular animals coexisting, but I guess that's just another Pluto Vs Goofy situation. But the critters are in a sort of between-state where they walk on two legs like people, but they are silent like animals. And in the adventure games they were basically treated like plush dolls so I have no idea what im supposed to think about that. A lot of times, they treat the critters like they are a separate species, like Pickies and Pigs are two completely unrelated things. Which IMO is the worst option. I think the critters should just be recontextualized as baby/child versions of anthros. Mix up around with the other anthro npc's, like the annoying kids characters in windwaker.

Giant photorealistic animals is an oddly recurring feature of sonic games and I'm all for it. I think they should add more. Giant orcas, giant crocodiles, giant snakes, giant sharks, giant bugs, go nuts. Give them lore, say they are old gods, whatever.

 

I'm on team "just throw in fuckin everything", personally. Be completely inscrutable as long as it still creates interesting aesthetic variety.

 

Today I had time to waste in some headcanons, have fun:

I have the same headcanon. Chaos is a mutated chao, and he has the same body proportions as the other anthro characters in the series, so I made the connection and speculated that all the other characters are also related to chao in a similar way as Chaos is. Also, they all represent different animal species but aren't really those animals, there are bird characters with no wings, and they all eat human food regardless of what the original animal they represent would naturally eat. Chao can absorb traits from the animals they are exposed to, and copy them, just like the anthros have some animal traits but they all seem to be of a common species.

The Babylon Rogues being both aliens and anthros also supports the idea that anthros might have alien origins.

Another connection that I did is that the early forms of Chaos, mutated by the negative energy of the Chaos Emeralds, have similar proportions as the Werehog, who is also mutated by negative energy... so maybe the transformation is common, Chaos 2 might just be "Werechaos".

Other headcanons:

Emerl was built 4.000 years in the past. I think that Sonic Chronicles is completely not canon and its lore can be rewritten with no care, so I think that Emerl was not part of a mass production line, he was a single unit built by an ancient civilization that was not the Echidnas (they are way more recent than 4.000 years ago, and weren't as advanced). I think it's based off the ancient's technology (Starfall Islands) and some descendants of the ancients might be behind his creation, but its technology is still way less advanced than Starfall Islands'.
His ability of copying the moves of his opponents might come from chao's ability of copying traits from animals and other creatures; if the people who created him were descendants of the ancients, they might have owned this power by themselves and the robot could be just a replica of themselves; Emerl has the same shape and proportions as an anthro, so it might just be an artificial version of a primordial anthro. Neo Metal Sonic can copy biological data from other creatures and use their powers, this ability is the result of Eggman's study of Emerl before throwing him away on a beach (he did implement this technology in his own robot after being unable to control the Gizoid).

The Chaos Emeralds originated on Earth and are connected to Gaia. They are aeons old, the ancients from Sonic Frontiers weren't their first users. Several Gaia Cycles ago, there was a civilization which started on Earth but evolved so much that expanded itself in the whole galaxy: they left the Master Emerald on their native planet, and moved each emerald to a different colonized planet. After the civilization fell, the emeralds were collected and used by other alien species (including the Black Arms), until the ancients found them and collected all in one place.

The Lost Hex is the place where the Special Stages are set. It's a world set in a parallel dimension which occasionally may cross Sonic's world, it doesn't happen on a regular bias unlike Little Planet's orbit, it happens when some contitions are met (unclear, probably something to do with the usage of the Chaos Emeralds). The planetoid is tied to planet Earth and the Zeti might have played a role during the past Gaia cycles in an attempt to let Dark Gaia win the fight against Light Gaia and control the planet, turning it into a land of darkness. Other than Zeti, there used to be good creatures who supported light Gaia as well, though in a war they were almost completely extinguished, so other species (humans or the ancients who came from space) have built the Gaia Temples to take their place and send the Chaos Emerald's positive energy to Light Gaia.
The lack of Chaos Emeralds on Earth for a while is the cause that allowed the Zeti demons to take over and control the planet, until the ancients came and returned the emeralds.

Zetis are a very ancient species and they existed before the ancients came on Earth.

The way Angel Island floats in the sky is the same way as the continents do in Sonic Unleashed. It controls the power of Gaia through the Master Emerald. Somewhere in the planet there might be a hole that's where Angel Island used to be.

The moon repaired itself because planets in Sonic's world are living creatures, and they can repair just like Earth does during Gaia Cycles. If it didn't repair yet (Dark Beginning shows a broken moon), it will at some point.

The Sol Dimension was created by Solaris. The Babylonians originated from such dimension (despite being aliens, they are based off Earth bird species, so I don't think they are completely aliens). The Flicky Dimension is in fact just the Sol Dimension, though Sonic and friends aren't aware of it. The Babylonians originated from a group of ancients who created and used the dimensional rings to move into the Sol Dimension, living with flickies and absorbing their bird traits. Sky Babylon is the remainings of the now gone civilization of the Babylonians. The Chaos Emeralds in the Genesis version of Flicky's Island are indeed Sol Emeralds.
The Sol Dimension is a mirrored version of Sonic's world, and many of its elements are directly connected each other: the Chaos and Sol Emeralds are in fact the same thing, they have access to the same power source (Gaia). The Sol Dimension only covers planet Earth, if you exit the atmosphere from there, you will be warped back to Sonic's dimension. It might be the same place where the Lost Hex is, just very high up in the sky.

Rings were originally created by the ancients in order to travel between parallel dimensions, though they are now crafted by Trip's people at Golden Capital. They can synchronize with Chaos Energy and allow any person to control it; they work even without a Chaos Emerald, just with the energy from the world itself... but obviously they can do wonders with all the 7 gems. The Chaos Emeralds can warp to different dimensions (Sol Emeralds too, often they connect each other to make a portal between the two dimensions), big dimensional rings can do the same thing without need of an emerald; often they are used to chase an emerald which escaped into another world (special stage). Several regular rings can fuse together and become a big ring. Very few people know and are able to control such powers, the skill required is similar to performing a Chaos Control; it's possible to passively use the rings activated by someone else. Rings themselves don't store energy, they only allow control of the surrounding existing energy.

Cyberspace was built as a prison for The End, but it's also a virtual place which overlaps with the real world and allows some incredible things: it can connect to people's minds, in a way so that they can keep living as a soul inside cyberspace even after death; this is the trick the ancients used when they created the kocos (living tombstones connected to cyberspace, to the dead person's soul). It can do some augmented reality tricks such as the cyloop and others... possibly the Phantom Ruby uses cyberspace as a base for generating the illusions (Eggman himself didn't fully understand the ruby); maybe the Reverie too. If Emerl was built by the ancients or some descendants, it's possible that his soul and memories might still exist, lost somewhere in cyberspace, like Sage was after dying during Frontiers' bad end.

 

See, my head cannon is just that rings are naturally occurring ores. Like how bismuth naturally makes square shapes, rings are just like that. My one and only source of evidence is that there is a mini game in sonic shuffle where you mine rings from the ground.

I like this. Since superstars established the seven chaos emeralds have unique elemental affinities, I noticed there are seven greek gods that have been mentioned in the sonic series so far. I figured that, like how chaos was trapped in the master emerald, they could say that each chaos emerald stores the power of some ancient god and thats where the energy comes from.

Purple - Ares - Mind/Senses
Yellow - Kronos - Time
Green - Rhea - Life/Nature
Cyan - Chaos - Water
Red - Gaia - Earth/Lava/Fire
White - Sol - Light/Power Multiplyer
Blue - Ouranos - Wind/Speed

It's not perfect but its the best i have so far. To justify why Chaos is linked to the Cyan emerald and not the Master Emerald, I'd say that the Chaos from SA1 is just a Chao mutated to resemble the Ancient Chaos and not the god itself. If I had to have a god specifically for the master emerald, I'd name them Hyperion. Because it's a greek god, and it has the word 'hyper' in it.

 

Another head canon: The northstar islands are the origin for all giant animals in the series, including the orca and the alligator. The islands have naturally high amounts of chaos-energy, and the fruits that grow on the island pull the energy from the ground. Creatures that eat the fruits become giant and photorealistic animals.
Since Trip grew up on northstar island, she already has a higher level of chaos energy in her system so that's why when she goes super she jumps straight to giant-animal territory.
"Super Sonic 3" or some other form of super sonic should be a giant photorealistic hedgehog.

 

So I was rewatching the Unleashed cutscenes to understand how they fit with Frontiers.

The last time the planet was broken apart (Time of Awakening) was tens of thousands of years ago. That's roughly the same time the Ancients came, but obviously not the exact same time, as the accuracy of these times are null.

Spoiler

So, based only on that, we cannot be sure if the Ancients came to Earth before or after the last Time of Awakening. But we know that event tens of thousands of years ago was not the first time the two Gaias had fought. They've been doing that for millions of years. Thus, regardless if the Ancients came before or after that event, it is a fact the Light Gaia had, many times before, defeated Dark Gaia and put the pieces of the planet back together without the Chaos Emeralds.

Spoiler

Which is not a problem, since Light Gaia draws his (their?) power from the day and light, not the Chaos Emeralds.

Spoiler

But the thing is, the Gaia Temples exist. And they exist not only to form a Megazord for Light Gaia, but also with the purpose of restoring the Chaos Emeralds. And despite the Gaia Temples are scattered around the globe, Light Gaia had never traveled the world before.

Spoiler

And inside one of the Gaia Temples we had the spirit of Light Gaia welcoming Chip back and making him remember his role as Light Gaia (he lost his memory at the beginning of the game).

Spoiler

One could argue that Light Gaia always loses his memory, but this is false. He lost his memory because of Eggman speeding up the Time of Awakening, not due to natural processes.

Spoiler

But if that's the case, then why would Light Gaia need to talk to his own soul? And why do the Gaia Temples exist, if Light Gaia doesn't need the Chaos Emeralds to restore the world? And how do they exist, if Light Gaia had never traveled the world before?

Did the Ancients build the Gaia Temples? Well I don't think so. The "mystical technology" that powers the Gaia Temples doesn't resemble the Ancients tech (at least in my opinion). And it doesn't look like it was some descendants of the Ancients, using different tech or different languages, as the symbols on the pillars are the same in every Gaia Temple around the world.

Spoiler

So here's my interpretation.
It's easy to assume that Light Gaia did not build himself the Gaia Temples, and possibly never needed them before. However, his own spirit was in one of them. So Light Gaia somehow knew (forseen) that the Time of Awakening would be sped up next time.
With the Chaos Emeralds on Earth, Light Gaia ordered the Gaia Temples were built across the globe by whoever was there at the time, using a messenger to spread the word.
What messenger? Maybe that phoenix in Chun-un. And how did he know this was going to happen? I don't know, we don't even know how the echidnas made that mural in S3K. Light Gaia is a god, he knows his stuff.

 

My take on the Gaia Temples is that Light Gaia separated his soul from the body and merged it with the temples (Megazord form) in order to control them, and didn't have enough time to restore his body and merge the soul back because the Awakening process was sped up. This would imply that he used the Temples Megazord last time too, and maybe that the ancients came on Earth before the last Time of Awakening (bringing the Chaos Emeralds with them), it (Awakening) possibly being the reason behind the ancient's disappearance and how they devolved into chao.

I believe that the Great Civilizations are counted from the last Time of Awakening onward, everything that came before is completely unknown. If the ancients predate the Time of Awakening, it would explain why nothing was known about them.

If it's true that during the last Time of Awakening, Light Gaia had to use the Temples Megazord, it means that he needed them. Maybe Light Gaia was initially defeated, and the civilizations from the former Awakening cycle helped him?

Lastly, Light Gaia draws power from day and light, the Chaos Emeralds also draw power from the surrounding (according to Sonic Channel's cover stories, they need to rest in nature in order to restore their power). What if the Chaos Emeralds have different powers depending on the environment they absorb energy from? On Earth they absorb light and darkness kind of like Gaia does (both), this is why they have positive and negative energy, and on Northstar Island they have special powers only specific of that place, etc.

Unrelated: light and dark are forms of energy, colors allow the time to flow, where lack of colors means that the time is not flowing (White Space). In Sonic's World, colors are energy it seems, not just the Wisps. It's a bit ironic since white theorically has all the colors in it.

 

Actually as I understand it the whole thing about the emeralds having positive and negative energy is non-canon. It was only mentioned in the SA1 dub AFAIK, so it's either a mistranslation or a localization change.

 

Could be.

tens of thousands of years ago - the Ancients come to earth
tens of thousands of years ago, but later - Time of Awakening
from the Time of Awakening up to 4,000 years ago - the first four great civilizations after the Ancients (that probably includes the Babylonians among the first three, but not the echidnas who would be the fifth)

But if that's the case, none of the first great civilizations built the Gaia Temples.
Unless a different civilization arose before the Time of Awakening and those were the responsible for building them. The time scale is very loose, there could be up to 70,000 years ago separating the arrival of the Ancients and the Time of Awakening.

 

Only tangentially related, but I like the idea of the '4 great civilizations' representing the different animal kingdoms in the order they evolved.

1st Civilization: Fish/Atlantians. Built the city Knuckles' Chaotix takes place, Newtrogic High Zone.
2nd Civilization: Dinosaurs/Lizards. Could probably be incorporated into Trip's tribe. Responsible for the sonic 2 Hidden Palace, which I interpret as a place where they learned to "grow" chaos emeralds.
3rd Civilization: Birds/Babylonians, the same as the Bird race that build all the avian engravings in places like Labyrinth Zone.
4th Civilization: Mammals/Echidna.

 

That's assuming they're the same in Sonic. I don't know what the intent was at the time Battle was written, but it seems totally plausible that Sonic Team these days would make up their own fantasy versions to assign traits to. I think in Post-Reboot Archie, someone mentions trolls (Naugus's species in that continuity) occupying one of the four civilizations.