A deep dive into the story of one of the most controversial IDW Sonic characters, and how algorithmic social media and fandom expectations m
Here it is! My deep dive into the story of Lanolin the Sheep, one of the most controversial IDW Sonic characters, and how algorithmic social media and fandom expectations made her so controversial in the first place. Yes, this is it, at long last: my big thesis on why the Sonic fandom on Twitter is like that, and my concern that it's starting to bleed into the comics.
An absolutely fantastic article, highly recommend anyone who's even whiffed some of twitters bullshit to read this, but there is one thing i wanna put my two cents on
As someone who exists in this specific space a lot of the time, i feel like this is due to the fact that unlike with regular sonic, who does have a lot of cool moments that are in the regular publics conscious, you CANNOT try and act like you're "cool" for liking Sonic.exe.
Sonic.exe started off from rock bottom utter dogshit, then got repopularized due to the current internet cringe punching bag. Any normal person will probably only know it from those two specific areas, more than likely just a youtubers playthrough of the original fangame or the og fnf mod.
Most exe creators already have to contend with the fact that most other groups of fans think they're cringe, they don't have anything to show off to convince people because there just ISN'T anything non fan made out there yet (Disreguarding more out there stuff like the Sinister Minds album or the latest arg, which are vvvery hard to explain to someone who's not in the know)
Due to this, most people who build on that don't usually have the desire to seem "cool", because it's already hopeless really. So you just go in the direction you want to go and build based on that. Whatever you find interesting, because the biggest audience already won't care about it, it's a lot easier to follow what you yourself want to do.
That's why the term "exe" is such a wide fuckin umbrella, you got retakes and remakes, stories that focus on the computer/fiction angle, stories in universe that are just generally scary, people aren't afraid to experiment cuz there's a lot less pushback if you do. A lot of the time it's even rewarded.
Tying back to the original point, trying to make stories and art for one specific audience, on that probably doesn't even care or like you, is just preparing yourself for failure. Make your own cringe ass things and have some fun with it. Get woke with it. trangsgenda sonicexe
