#listen- I am really just trying to make sense of the whole fucking sega mandate thing

[w0lp3rtinger]

I just had a thought.

We know from 06 that, in that future present, Omega will be utilized to take Shadow down, ultimately betraying him.

However, the very fact that Silver goes into the past, over and over and over again, shows that the future can be changed.

And it can be changed for the better. I do wonder (and hope) that this current stretch that Shadow is on... is just him growing as a person. Perhaps this is a way to rectify the damage Sega seems content to lay upon his character, but consider this. In SA2, he was a softspoken, snarky person who wasn't a villian, but rather, someone who was truly hurting and thought they only had one way out, one way to make right the fact that the only family he had ever known, including Maria, had been destroyed in front of his very eyes.

Then you have Heros which is so fresh after SA2, and he doesn't remember anything. He's in agony over this until he gets to a point where he thinks, you know, it's okay I don't know. I have a new family. I have new people who I care for, and who care for me, and whatever I was, it no longer matters. I'm whatever I choose to be, and that's fine.

THEN you have the Shadow the Hedgehog game, when Team Dark has dispersed, where he's alone with his thoughts for too long, where he relapses into that hesitation and questioning and, honestly, fear. What was he, who is he, why is he having PTSD effects over a thing he can see but doesn't understand? That's terrifying. And then this man who claims to be his father tells him that humanity needs to be destroyed, and if they aren't, they will destroy him. Yeah, Eggman says he's the original in the end, but... that whole event will still stick with you. You were so easily played, weren't you? You were so desperate to be good at something, to be wanted by someone, after your old family seemed to go up in smoke.

You can't do that again. You're homeless, living out of an abandoned Eggman base that you can't even keep because you get the stuffing beaten out of you by a robot. Maybe Rouge realized you shouldn't be alone. Maybe G.U.N wanted to just know where you were. Either way, you're brought back into your family, only to find out that...the thing that beat you, that can destroy the world. You just got the world back, and that scares you. You just fixed your latest and greatest mistake. When you react with violence, you're told to rein it in and calm down, but your fear never leaves you. And when you're friends are threatened again, you are there. Every time Rouge goes missing, or Omega is out of commission, you come in swinging. Yes, you help out team Sonic, but they will never be your first priority. They aren't family to you. Team Dark is, and amongst Team Dark, the only one that truly understand what it means to be a weapon is Omega.

And then, then you're told that's the very person who will undo you.

And everything hurts all over again. Everything is bad, and wrong, and all the people you trusted, you're afraid they're going to lie to you again, that you're a sucker just waiting to be duped, that you're never going to be more than that jackass in the corner with unresolved PTSD who's a sucker for someone you assume is trying their best, because you want to believe everyone is trying their best, because you're trying your best.

And so you shut down.

You quit trying to understand everyone else, even if you want to. You stop trying to fit yourself into the fabric of friends around you because it's not going to work. You give up. You're just going to be angry and bitter because you know- you know- you can't trust them. And eventually, they'll all die, won't they? You're going to be left alone as time takes them one by one.

Except for Omega.

Because at the end of everything, Omega really will be the only one who knew you left, and they're not going to be able to stand alone to defend you.

Ultimately, there is a choice. The choice is to continue to be cut off, accepting that eventually the world will turn against you, and though you will fight it like you always have, you will lose.

Or

You accept who you really are (no, truly) with all your faults and failings and successes and splendors. You accept your limitations alongside of your limitless possibilities . You allow yourself to be kind, to care, to laugh, to love the world around you. You let friends in. You make peace with what you cannot change instead of stuffing it in the closet in your brain. You learn to let things go. You learn to let life in.

And maybe, if you pick the second option, there will be people alive to defend you when the world comes for you, like it will, because it will. Maybe, if you choose to open yourself up again, you won't have to suffer it alone.

#shadow #shadow the hedgehog #sth #sonic #sonic the hedgehog #theory #listen- I am really just trying to make sense of the whole fucking sega mandate thing #and the hoops that both the game and comic writers and jumping through at the moment #but like- it also works #and I know that everything is suppose to be forgotten at the end of 06 but it's not like he wouldn't find out a different way #so the point still works #writing #read #me stuff