BE COOL, BE WILD, & BE GROOVY !!

sonic the hedgehog is probably one of if not the most important piece of media in my life. this fandom basically defined where and how i spent the bulk of my early internet years; i made OC documents in word and wrote script-style fics for my own enjoyment some of which i posted to fanfiction dot net or those oldschool wiki-style rp sites people made, i rped in chatrooms like iscribble and on the 4kids forums, i spent hours drawing in sketchbooks and looking up fanart on deviantART and posting my own, too, in the hopes that my OCs would one day become beloved like the ones i admired so much were. i even made bad windows movie maker AMVs of my OCs to put on youtube & set them to three days grace songs and stuff like that. i distinctly remember going to the sonic central website and looking at the fanart people submitted. i really wanted one of my pictures posted, so i drew my first ever piece of sonic fanart on printer paper and for some reason mailed it all the way to SEGA of japan. needless to say my picture never got posted--at the time i thought it just wasn't good enough but obviously i didn't send it to the right spot. that said, months later, i actually got a reply from SEGA of japan. i don't remember what it said anymore, but i'm sure it was something to the effect of thank you for loving sonic.

my introduction to sonic was through sonic adventure DX for the PC which we bought at micro center or maybe computer USA or some kind of store like that. i couldn't beat chaos 0 and had to have my dad help me but from there i was hooked. i didn't have most consoles growing up so my point of exposure to sonic was through fandom and through my own imagination, but thanks to the power of friends with dreamcasts and wiis and xboxes and gba ports and emulators and later the steam releases of many of the games i've been able to play at least a few minutes of almost every single title.

my favorite game is probably still SONIC ADVENTURE but i also really like SONIC RIDERS, SHADOW GENERATIONS, and THE RUSH GAMES. there are plenty of sonic games i like for their narratives, including the often overhated sonic 06 (idc, that game has a solid story!) but these are the ones i usually boot up when i want to play a sonic game. that said, my favorite story in a game has got to be SONIC ADVENTURE 2's with SONIC BATTLE as a runner-up.

my favorite character is BLAZE THE CAT with runner-ups being SURGE THE TENREC, KNUCKLES THE ECHIDNA, JET THE HAWK, SONIC himself, and SALLY ACORN.

like most people my age on the internet i had a phase where i thought i was too cool for sonic--if you're around my age you probably remember a time where sonic was notorious and the fans were also kind of notoriously cringe and i was 14 and wanted to separate myself from them because i was into 'cooler' stuff now. like anime. and homestuck (lol). but you know what? even in the middle of that annoying internet era when everyone was denying how awesome sonic was, no one ever hated on sonic's music. because we all knew how good it was.

my favorite vocal theme is probably ENDLESS POSSIBILITY but i also really love CATCH ME IF YOU CAN'S ZERO GRAVITY REMIX, I AM... ALL OF ME, DREAMS OF AN ABSOLUTION, HIS WORLD, FIND YOUR FLAME, WAKING UP, DIVE INTO THE MELLOW, and LIVING IN THE CITY... ugh it's so hard to just pick a handful!!!!! so many talented musicians have worked on sonic games!

it's hard to pick a favorite overall soundtrack but i'd have to say my faves are SHADOW THE HEDGEHOG, SONIC ADVENTURE 2, RIDERS, THE RUSH GAMES, SONIC CD (jp/pal release), and HEROES. in retrospect as much as i really don't like the story of the ShTH game it really paved the way for me getting into industrial music later...

in 2025 i got to see julien-k live and got to tell them i discovered their music through sonic heroes and ngl i think that was the most starstruck i have ever been in my life even though they probably don't care much about the music they made for an old sonic game lol

arguably most of my time with sonic that hasn't been spent consuming fan content or making my own stuff growing up has been spent with the comics. perhaps my biggest hot take is that i love the archie comics. there's a lot wrong with them but i firmly believe it's not as bad as a lot of people say, and i think the moment ian flynn came on as the main writer, everything took a turn from Bad to Really Good.

if you don't know much about the archie sonic comics, basically they were sonic's comic run that was published by archie and it ran from 1992-2016. this is obviously a super long time! there's lots of worldbuilding the comics introduced that was later made obsolete by new game titles, forcing the writers of the comics to have to develop an entirely new canon and lore that was adaptable both to their writing and keep it somewhat compliant with the changes the games were introducing to the characters--and yeah some of this worldbuilding kind of sucks, but i loved the creativity the team was allowed to have in fleshing out the world of sonic and his friends, and when the writing was good it allowed for (imo) the most interesting depictions of sonic and his friends without being shackled to the image of a high-speed action game for kids. the freedom fighters are such an awesome supporting cast to sonic and tails and as much as the echidna lore penders introduced sucked sometimes i miss characters like julie-su and lien-da as well and i just don't feel like any other sonic media gets even half as far as archie did in making the world feel complete and lived-in and not just a world 'inhabited by sonic for sonic' if that makes sense.

if you are tentatively interested in reading archie sonic, i would recommend picking up the comics after the second sega genesis wave (SSGW). the SSGW was basically an in-universe excuse for a retcon that had to occur due to a former archie writer trying to sue archie and SEGA for stealing his characters (lol). this wiped the slate clean of a chunk of the archie-only supporting characters and also basically reset the timeline so the events of the games became the characters' backstories. the post-SSGW era begins at #252. if you are interested in reading more from there, i recommend picking up archie sonic at #150 so you can see the highlights of the pre-SSGW era without having to slog through some of the frankly bizarre worldbuilding and character decisions and just see how the writers managed to cobble together genuinely interesting narratives from the bad building blocks they were given.

if you just wanna read a few arcs here and there, the side-comic SONIC UNIVERSE has a lot of really good arcs about characters who don't get the limelight as much. one of my favorite sonic universe arcs is the one where shadow gets sent to the sol dimension to dispatch metal sonic and he ends up meeting and teaming up with blaze!

OK i've spent a lot of time elaborating on my faves and my life spent with sonic! but of course i'm sure people are wondering: do you have any OCs? of course i do!

i don't really spend as much time making OCs in general as i used to and most of the OCs i've had from back in the day have been retired but i have two i've kept from my childhood and draw every so often and occasionally RP as. their names are BERYL THE WOLF and OCARINA THE CAT. their stories and imagined roles in the sonic universe has changed a lot from their initial conception of course! i also made a new character in 2023 named SONNY THE PORCUPINE.

i might move the addtl info about them to a secondary shrine page or maybe a shrine for my OCs at some point but here's the tldrs of their whole deal (i welcome you to check out my toyhouse @ heliotropeheaven as well & please reach out if you want to do an art trade or anything!):

BERYL is my vision for "what if sonic riders had a skiing/snowboarding style spin-off game at the time SSX was all the rage?" and "what would the rival character be like?" she is a very cranky, kind of aggressive extreme gear racer and developer. unlike the main form of EG-racing that occurs in metal city and beyond, she's developed a type of EG-racing that allows for the boards and skis to convert snow powder and terrain elements into air. this encourages risk-taking and tricks to gain more air. because of her work on the EG, beryl has singlehandedly made SA1's ice cap zone a hot-spot for extreme gear racing, and she is very respected, earning her the title of 'queen of the mountain.' she also runs a winter clothing line.

OCARINA is the OC i've reworked the most. she is a gaia temple guardian-in-training and is sort of akin to a sonic equivalent of a monk i guess. she studies theology or whatever the sonic equivalent of that might be at the university of spagonia and lives in a small room at the temple as she continues her training. i have a lot of personal headcanons about chaos energy in the world of sonic, but i wanted her to be a parallel to sonic and co. where doing things naturally and letting the world breathe through them comes naturally to them so she doesn't have that natural aptitude and has to work really hard to feel connected to the world around her. ocarina is kind of air-headed and a bit ditzy but is a really hard worker.

SONNY is the frontman and lead guitarist for the up and coming band pincushion which is based out of radical city. i basically just wanted an OC with sonic underground style music powers. unfortunately for sonny, his full name is actually sonic too, but obviously a certain blue hedgehog has come to be known as 'the' sonic so to prevent jokes about his name or not being blue or whatever, he primarily goes by sonny (although he actually likes his name so friends are allowed and encouraged to call him sonic). he's kind of quiet but has an incredibly magnetic presence on stage and is generally quite earnest and easy to get to know once you get past that prickly shell!

here are some sonic resources for you!: