thank you for answering! and for reminding me about Flipnote, I miss that little thing. your OC is lovely btw! any honorable mentions to show?
No problem ! And thank you for the compliment !
Well, as for honorable mentions... I can't really show it because I'm not done with the designs of the characters yet, but I'm pretty proud of my Sonic.exe lore ! Long story short : I used to be obsessed with the Sonic.exe lore made by the writer of the OG Creepypasta, but in retrospect it had a bunch of issues, and when some gross news came out my infatuation broke off and I stopped revering this so-called "canon". Anyway, ever since I've been going hard on rewriting the Sonic.exe lore to use it in Léa's story.
The changes are in the designs, the names and a bunch of things.
First of all, I'm redesigning Exe and his Seven Guardians. I haven't sketched everyone yet, but here's what I have so far :
It was important to me that each guardian get a unique quill style and that Gekido look like a hedgehog this time around (he originally looked like Knuckles and it was weird). The Seven Guardians of X as they're typically called are beings created by Exe/X to assist him, and they all represent a human feeling. Yukubo is desire, Kofuku is happiness, Gekido is anger, Kito is faith/prayer, Aishu is sorrow, Kirai is hatred, and Kyofu is fear. I haven't made a lot of changes when it comes to the stories of the Guardians ; I just had to kinda make up my own personalities for them because the little things the OG creator showed is most likely lost now (it exist only in my memory now I guess).
Where things REALLY got the most changes was with the "Cult of X", as it's called in the OG lore.
In the OG lore and in my Sonic.exe lore, Exe has a cult on Earth which helps to spread his disks, cover up some of his deeds, etc. And that's basically the biggest similarity between those two lores... Mine doesn't even use the same name for the cult ! As an other OG lore rewriter pointed out, cults do not call themselves cults ; on the contrary they tend to call other groups the "real cults". And the rewriter made me admit that yeah, most people wouldn't want anything to do with the religion/cult of a malicious dark matter being so the cult needs a cover. So that's how I've started working on "Far Away GalaXy", my version of the Cult of X ! Its cover is an organization which provides help & support for abuse victims. It was created by Shannon Goldman, who is the leader of the cult, like it used to be in the OG lore before the OG writer brought up "Father". On the surface the group is well-liked, getting shootouts from many people, especially for their queer inclusiveness. The people who ask for help are called "Stars" and the method Far Away GalaXy therapists & staff use is centered over seven "core feelings" they call "Planets" in brochures : fear, sorrow, anger, hatred, desire, faith/hope and happiness... It rings a bell, doesn't it ? Without even bringing up the supernatural stuff in public, the group already starts to ease you into its core beliefs. Anyway, those feelings are seen as "normal parts of life" the abuse victims need to work on, in the order I've listed them. Think of it as something like the seven states of grief but for abuse victims and made by a cult.
Once someone gets very into Far Away GalaXy, they might be encouraged further into the core beliefs of the cult. It starts with hate of the Abrahamic religions, then a lesser opinion of mankind as a whole. Eventually members are invited to send a "special gift" to one of their abusers, and surprise surprise : it's a Sonic.exe disk ! Obviously things go as you'd expect once the person receives the disk ; and now the brainwashed member initially thinks they killed their abuser. But soon they're reassured as they are told about the eternity of souls, and the great love Lord X has for them. At this point, even if you want to leave, the cult has enough material to blackmail you and controls too much of your life anyway ; trying to denounce anything would turn you into Exe's next toy. The religious rhetoric is that Exe is the Sun from a Far Away GalaXy that the humans need to reach with the Spaceship, a tool or being that Exe will use to take over Earth. The Guardians are Planets, Shannon is the Spaceship's Captain and the Satellite of the Yukubo (aka the Planet of Desire ; Satellites are subordinates of a Celestial Body (Planets, Sun) that are higher than regular humans), and the other members of the cult are the Crew. Exe is also called "Lord X" or just "X", and humans are to be his "toys". The Spaceship is eventually found, and it's... Léa, who would have guessed ! In case it wasn't clear, Léa are originally an Earthling ; they look like a hedgehog when they travel to Mobius or Exe's world (sometimes). Here's what they look like as a human (the blue one is their Far Away GalaXy fit) :
Contrary to what Léa expected, being the "key to salvation" of the cult of their boyfriend (yep, they're dating Exe) isn't fun at all. When Exe sends them to the USA under the guise of a year of leisure (Léa are French), right at the core of his cult, Léa thought it couldn't be hell, well probably weird but not horrible. Shannon Goldman seems very friendly to them at first, gifting them a binder and overall being supportive, but things get bad pretty soon. Not wanting Léa to feel important (as Shannon thinks they are just a human who are abusing their position of key to demand things from X since Léa have made Exe sign a contract to post-pone his takeover), Shannon starts to use more and more dehumanizing language when talking to/about Léa in religious situations. In this context she starts to only call them "the Spaceship", use it/its pronouns for them, and eventually always talk to them at the third person instead of saying "you". She says they are no-one, nobody, especially not to the Sun ; they are just a mere tool in her opinion, and once Exe will have taken over they will go "from nobody to nothing". She controls Léa's sleep and anxiety medication, making them more or less tired & upset depending of what she needs, control their internet usage, and even starts to physically abuse them. Léa do not have a license or even a car, they don't know much about living in the USA and have to rely on Far Away GalaXy for their housing and money in the USA, so they're really trapped. But what about Exe, why doesn't he help ? Well Exe has another moment of "I don't know what to do about loving a human", and he wants to keep up his status, so he just tells Léa to trust Shannon to do what's best for everyone. It really breaks Léa's spirit, but don't worry things eventually improve and they get to make Shannon regret her life choices when they get a surge of power after a certain event... And Exe apologizes to them, too.
There are other members of Far Away GalaXy that were in the OG lore but were originally never developed, like Lexi Violet or Lazarus. Lexi is a strange girl who wears dark yet cute fashion and is rarely seen without her big cat plushie. She moves it around pretending to only report the words of the plush if she deems you to not be interesting enough to talk directly to ; she has a tendency to leave conversations if she deems they're "booooriiing". The cat stuff was already in the OG lore... Anyway, she's the main artists of the group ; she designs logos, merch and clothes for Far Away GalaXy. Sometimes she lets Léa assist her a bit. She is aware of the cult stuff, and feels curious about where things will go, not feeling any remorse about it. When Léa are desperate for someone to listen to them, Lexi call them selfish for complaining about what Shannon puts them through ; of course Léa feel even more hopeless after that. Léa's basically only friend in Far Away GalaXy is Alice, Shannon's daughter, who is not even aware of most of the cult stuff. While Shannon is nicknamed "Mother" by a bunch of cult members (she really surrounds herself with people desperate for any kind of attention), Alice is the only person to officially be Shannon's daughter, as she was adopted by her as a child. Alice is no more than a year older than Léa, and very soft-spoken. They're just glad she still sees them as a person, even if they're not allowed to tell her about any of the cult stuff.
Wow that turned into a long ramble ! Sorry about that, by the way... But I'm very proud of how I've reworked the OG lore, and made it fit in Léa's story. I'm reclaiming something that made me happy and I think it's cool ! It's not like the OG writer was getting any money from that, and I doubt most people even know who I'm talking about when I say "the OG writer/creator of Sonic.exe", plus he has left all of his social media soooo... I feel like I can reclaim that ! So many things in the OG lore weren't even created by the guy in question ; Lexi, Shannon, Lazarus, and Alice were created by other people... Talking about a "canon" Sonic.exe doesn't make much sense, especially not now, and gives too much credit to this one guy. But I'm getting off-topic...!
Anyway I hope it wasn't too tedious to read ! Thank you for giving me an excuse to ramble again !
