I won’t be posting these very often because the whole goal of this blog is for immersion -- that is to say, I want you to see as little of the puppet master behind the puppets so you don’t notice the string as much, you know? That being said, I have something that I want to address that I was a little vague on, haha, whoops.
So I think it’s necessary for me to address what makes me consider a ship canon. I mentioned in the rules that unless you place the ship in brackets at the beginning of your ask/submission, shippy questions will be responded to with a canon-slant; but for some people, some ships were hinted at, while others were apparently “planned” by SEGA (I have never seen proof of these claims, but they’ve gone around). I decided upon thinking about this more that I should clarify what I consider canon for this blog!
For this blog, the only canon “shippy” material is the shippy material outright stated within the canon that the ask is being answered in. For example, while Vector has a crush on Vanilla in Sonic X, there’s no hint that he does the same in the games, so while answering Sonic X asks Vector will indicate this crush but in game asks he may not even know Vanilla at all! I will not allow personal interpretation to get in the way of this; it has to be explicitly made clear within the text itself. No “subtext”, no “look at this, it’s clearly a sign it’s meant to be!” This is to keep as much subjectivity out of it as possible.
This means, as an example, these things are canon and will be treated as such:
Amy has a crush on Sonic (this one is obvious)
Knuckles and Rouge are mutually attracted to each other (it’s very obvious that Rouge was flirting with Knuckles and she was thinking of settling down with him in SA2; it should also be mentioned that Knuckles’s theme song directly calls Rouge “sexy and smooth”)
(In Sonic X) Vector has a crush on Vanilla (this one is also obvious)
Sonic and Amy like each other in Sonic Boom (obvious in Amy’s case, and the heavy nature of the suggesting, not to mention the fact that Sonic is not deterred by Amy, makes it pretty much stated that this is the case for Sonic as well)
While these things are not canon, and will not be abided by:
Sonic is just shy toward Amy in the games (while his avoidance of her is canon, there’s no indication that this has a romantic slant; at most, he’s exasperated by her overbearing nature and thinks she doesn’t take things seriously)
Shadow likes Rouge (while there’s indication the two of them are close, a romantic slant is again left out of this)
Knuckles and Rouge are together (while the two of them obviously are attracted to each other, there’s nothing indicating the two are actually dating)
And yes, this does go for AUs as well! If you’re submitting an AU in, if you want certain ships to be canon for that AU, be sure to state so in your submission. Otherwise, relationships will be logically deduced based on the information you’ve provided!
This is not to say you can’t send ship asks. Quite the contrary! As mentioned before, we have a method in which you can send these asks. I must stress that just about any ship is acceptable, whether it’s a popular one or not, LGBT, etc! It can be as something as popular as Sonamy, or as niche as Shadow/Espio -- whatever fits your palette, send it in! These asks will be approached from the angle of if this ship is true, how does the dynamic work, and how did it come to be, which will include almost AU-esque scenarios, especially in the case of characters who never met within that canon.
I should also state that most fan theories will not be followed for canon asks; although this blog is, by technicality, not canon as it is not written by SEGA themselves, I try to keep personal theory out of it unless we use an AU specifically for that theory! That includes popular theories, such as:
Shadow is Silver’s father in the future
Jet, Wave, and Storm are directly related
Modern Shadow really is an android
The exceptions for this go if a question is directly asked and I have no way to answer it without using a fan theory, e.g. “who are your parents, Sonic?” In this case, I will be answering it in this nature, bearing in mind that canon information can come out and contradict my answer in the future. Should that happen, I will make an update post about these posts.
That’s all! Remember, if you have any questions about the blog, feel free to send them in! For most of you I will answer these privately so as not to clog up the blog, so I do recommend you send it off-anon. Don’t worry; I won’t publicly answer asks that are sent directly to the mod!
