Toxic Fandoms With Author Man

Season 2: Episode 2

Hey everybody, it's your friendly neighborhood Author Man!

Alright, I missed the update yesterday. My bad guys, I've had a long work week.

Anyway, let's get right into the episode.

Hello friends and guests, welcome to TOXIC FANDOMS! My name is Author Man, and I'll your host and tour guide into the depths of misery and despair that the internet offers.

Oh boy, ladies and gents we have a big one today. One that spans comic books, video games, TV shows, and now a movie. That's right everybody, today on the chopping block is...

SONIC THE HEDGEHOG!

Oh yeah, striking while the iron (or meme) is... semi warm. Kinda been a week or two since the trailer came out, I know.

Anyway, here's some information from Wikipedia, explaining Sonic:

Sonic the Hedgehog is a produced by centering on a series of high-speed . , the protagonist, is an anthropomorphic blue with . Typically, Sonic must stop antagonist plans for world domination, often helped by , such as , , and .

The , released in 1991, was conceived by Sega's division after Sega requested a new mascot character to replace and compete with 's mascot . Its success spawned many sequels and helped Sega become one of the leading video game companies during the of the early 1990s. The first major 3D Sonic game, , was released in 1998 for the . Spin-offs have explored other genres, including such as (1997) and sports games such as (2007).

Alright, let's get right into this.

You all know how the show works; I pick a fandom each week and review them based on my five WACRS (Welcoming, Appreciation, Creativity, Relevancy, and Shipping). The fandom is given a score out of five for each section and at the end of the episode, all scores are averaged out and the fandom is given it's place on my TOXICITY SCALE!

!DISCLAIMER!

I do not judge the quality of the media, though the quality will be taken into consideration for some categories.

Ratings are based off facts, not feelings. Thus, anecdotal stories will be taken as tertiary sources.

!DISCLAIMER OVER!

So without further ado, let's get into this.

Category 1: Welcoming

As I've said before, this is where generally small fandoms take a lead on me. This fandom gets so few new members daily (Somewhere around 50 internationally per day, by my research), that they have no time or room to be mean to new members.

This is sorta the black hole effect in action, to a lesser extent.

So there ya go guys, have fun.

Category Score: 5/10

Category 2: Appreciation

Okay. We're gonna have to bend this one a little bit.

We all saw the trailer. It was f*cking terrible until Jim Carrey showed up. And the design for Sonic looked like it came straight out of DeviantArt's shit page. It was absolutely terrible, and lined up to be the worst movie in 2019 (Which is actually looking like it's gonna be a great year for movie nerds like myself).

So, I'm gonna bend the rules when it comes to the Sonic designs comments. Hell, I made a few of those comments myself.

But even ignoring that, the fans are pretty kind. Even when the Sonic Forces creators f*cked up the infinite potential of that game (Seriously, it could've been 3D Sonic's rebirth as a great game), the fans responded mostly by suggesting things they could change to make it better.

And to their credit, it seems like Sega is listening, considering the creators of Sonic thanking the internet for making the movie design change.

Category Score: 6/10

Category 3: Creativity

Oh boy, here we go. Memes, porn, fanart, and everything else is in this category, and lord knows it's my favorite.

Okay, no I'm not a furry, but the porn is... interesting. My dick doesn't seem to mind at least.

The memes are pretty funny, if weird at times.

The fanart is pretty cool as well, taking the scenes from the games and making some cool art out of it.

One thing I have to mention is Sonic Paradox. We've all watched it, we've all laughed our asses off, and they've become timeless. While I wish they were still going, sadly they're not. But we'll always have the memories.

Here's the score.

Category Score: 8/10. Damn near perfect, thanks to Sonic Paradox.

Category 4: Relevancy

With a new movie trailer and memes all over the place, people are really beginning to talk about Sonic some more.

It's kinda nice actually, hearing about an old fandom like this.

It's kind of making me sentimental, considering that this is one of the first fandoms I ever learned about, and the one that made me interested in the field of Fandomology.

Here's to you, Sonic.

Category Score: 7/10

Category 5: Shipping

Hahahahhahahahahhahah.

You guys know that when I start laughing, shit's about to get serious.

With a near infinite roster of characters, insane relationship statuses, and an... odd... group of fans, there's bound to be some incredible shipping.

From non-canon to completely insane, the shippings are amazing.

Some of my personal favorites are SonShad, ShadAmy, TailsMar, and ShadTails, but there are literally millions.

FUN FANDOM FACT:

The names of these ships are very good indicators of the fandoms age, much like the rings of a tree. Unlike the ship names of RWBY (Bumblebee, WhiteRose, etc), the Sonic fandom uses the near-ancient form of just smashing two character's names together to make a ship.

Anyway, a few of my other favs are BlazeAmy, SonSilver, and KnuxTikal.

Alright, let's see the shitshow.

Category Score: -10/10

Final Words:

This edition of Final Words is brought to you by AOL Dial Up Internet: Providing you the only internet access of the 1980s.

SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEe-BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

Alright, I'm back.

For my last remarks, I'd like to explain why this fandom is so important to our field.

This fandom literally started our field. As a young boy, I began to look at this fandom under my child's microscope, looking at the tiny details and points of the minds of these people. They were my subject of major interest, which got me started on researching other fandoms, and on and on, until I began this book. And now, here we are.

This beer's for you, Sonic fans, see you guys in a few more years.

Give 'em the final score.

FINAL SCORE:

SONIC FANDOM, ON THE TOXICITY SCALE, YOU ARE...

3.2/10

See ya in another life, Brotha!