#𝐑𝐎𝐓𝐂𝐀𝐋𝐘𝐏𝐒𝐄 . . . ⅋ I ᵂᴵᴸᴸ 𝘧𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 ᴸᴵᴷᴱ I 𝗔𝗟𝗪𝗔𝗬𝗦 have, ﹕ (independent,) ˡᵒʷ activity blog for 𝗦𝗛𝗔𝗗𝗢𝗪 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗛𝗘𝗗𝗚𝗘𝗛𝗢𝗚. ⸻ divergent, timeline-flexible; principally GAMESVERSE, with tentative influence from the anime. expect slow replies; at the moment, I prioritize developing relationships ooc & lore-dumping about extremely niche subjects on this blog. do note that this blog is entirely divorced from Paramount's canon. furthermore, due to the content discussed, I am firm about my no minors policy. this blog is strictly 18+.
𝚊 𝚜𝚝𝚞𝚍𝚢 𝚒𝚗 the art of the manmade machine, nihilism, repetition compulsion, todestrieb, suicidality externalized as saviorism, the past as a hothouse of ghosts, weaponhood vs. personhood, somatic backlogs, mythologization (& subsequent death) of Her, martyrdom in immortal flesh, & the bearing of prophecies. . . . pinboard.
affiliated with: @lightdash, @hammeringheart.
𝐈. this is a mutuals-only, selective, & LOW-ACTIVITY blog for Shadow the Hedgehog. I am strictly gameverse with x influences, though mostly headcanon-based; do note that I am divorced from movie-canon & disregard IDW's/Archie’s treatment of Shadow, generally speaking. penned by Merlin, 23/they&them/est. icon border is a heavily edited commission from @/poetryrph.
* if possible, please use tone tags with me, particularly for instances of sarcasm. otherwise, please do not approach or interact with me on the basis of being "mean," even if jokingly; it is hurtful & made more complicated by the modality of text. I know I am fundamentally a silly blog about a talking hedgehog, but I do take my hobby seriously, & I enjoy thinking about the implications of the world shadow lives in. I also have memory problems. if I follow you twice & you are not interested in writing with me, feel free to block me; just know I am not trying to annoy you.
𝐈𝐈. the song featured in the pinned is Megami (Goddess) by Buck-Tick. psd featured is gore by vendettapsds. I will majorly be iconless & this blog will be light on graphics, due to constraints on my time & general burnout with photoshop (lmao) ...
𝐈𝐈𝐈. I will keep this simple, because we all understand basic etiquette: it applies here. do not godmod, assume, forceship, etc… I also don't do drama. short of there being someone truly harmful / problematic in the RPC (I'm sure you all understand what I mean here), I have no interest in promulgating callout posts for petty drama. please keep me out of it; if I am interacting with someone harmful, a dm will suffice. furthermore, I think your time will be better spent elsewhere if you believe that transformative fiction warrants any sort of harassment or death threats.
𝐈𝐕. Shadow is very powerful. even his existence within the universe he was conceived in has been repeatedly nerfed because Sega realizes they wrote themselves into a corner. you can pick a fight with him, but expect to lose if your muse is otherwise ordinary or human--his entire being is predicated on flimsy & ever-changing in-universe explanations of "Chaos" energy (which functions similarly to ki as it's depicted in DBZ, with some fantastical elements attached).
𝐕. I prioritize developing extensive plots & ooc/ic relationships over on-the-fly threads. I have tried to do them; it just doesn't work for me. the best way to write with me is by plotting with me. that being said, feel free to send an ask meme--just go in with the expectation that I will most likely reach out to you about it. I also have not read the comics in any extensive manner... I am more than happy to write with comic muses, but i just ask for patience with my lore gaps.
𝐕𝐈. furthermore, I tend not to acknowledge Shadow’s characterization within the last 10-ish years anyway, borrowing liberally from Japanese & Western canon re: his psyche & personality, infused with my own interpretations & sci-fi tropes. most inspiration is taken directly from Adventure 2, Heroes/Sonic X, 06, & tentatively SHTH 05 (with heavy, HEAVY modifications).
𝐕𝐈𝐈. there won’t be any sexual nsfw here; I understand Shadow’s age is nebulous, as are the ages of the rest of the characters. for my own comfort, Shadow will generally be portrayed as 21+, as I write him post-Forces.
on-screen, Shadow is shipped with @/lightdash, &, following Sonic’s death, Amy at @/hammeringheart.
𝐕𝐈𝐈𝐈. I do have corresponding human verses for those interested; I understand writing with a 3'5" anthromorphic hedgehog comes across as a little fundamentally unserious ... faceclaim to be announced.
𝐈𝐗. other content will be discussed, such as: death/child death, all things military, amnesia, dissociation, discussions of trauma, suicidality, & violence/mentions of gore (immortality comes with nasty implications), & general Shadow the Hedgehog content.
I will most likely not follow any blogs back who are based in the following rpcs: AOT/SNK, H*zbin Hotel, & Resident Evil. This is not a matter of discomfort with content (enjoy what you enjoy), but rather a discomfort with those RPCs in particular.
** Shadow suffers from selective mutism. he is proficient in JSL & ASL, respectively. he also suffers from C-PTSD & Bipolar II. please keep this in mind, especially for first-basis interactions. . . .
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🎨 ARTIST PALETTE— what are some hobbies that you like to partake in? do you think they're just to pass time or to distract yourself, or do you believe some of them potentially have therapeutic outcomes for you?
there is a long running joke on rotcalypse that Shadow's attitude towards pleasure can be summarized by this image. jokes aside, Shadow's life is quite sterile insofar as there is not much he tends to outside of work & his health (& even that is mostly neglected, owed to his advanced biology, synthesized by Black Legion DNA & Chaos energy; that alone keeps him running efficiently, which is helpful for someone like Shadow who is prone to weeks-long bouts of hyperfocus that typically result in an almost complete dysfunction of his interoception). as Shadow has little to no tastebuds & can go very long without food to survive, he hardly even eats for pleasure, & his rapid-fire metabolism ensures that any alcohol or drug has little if any effect on him. I have touched upon Shadow's attitude towards "pleasure" in another meta, but I will briefly summarize it here: he does not participate in the pursuit of it at all, simply because he feels that it is a distraction from his "true" purpose. remember that Shadow was born through the intent to serve something/someone, so in that place his devotion orients itself toward his "job," which is something he can execute with focus, precision, & perfection. it replaces almost every facet of his life. in this sense, Shadow perceives himself as a machine. chronic, untreated mental illnesses, such as CPTSD & OCD (&, more broadly, dissociation) also afflict Shadow with anhedonia. for Shadow, even feeling good is a bit of an endeavor.
suffice to say, Shadow leads a bit of an ascetic life. his house is spartan; it serves Shadow by providing a roof & consistency, & that much is revealed to the average visitor when they see the empty pantries & the overall state of neglect it's in. Shadow bounces around locations constantly anyways, but his obsessive-compulsive mind appreciates the consistency if it can outpace his paranoia. his occupation & his self-bestowed devotion leave little room for anything else in his life; as I've said before, Shadow devotes himself to few things with robotic steadiness.
however, what people see on the outside might provide a different answer to this question. they might see Shadow on a run, either by himself or with Sonic, or they might see him "meditating" under the aurora, or they might see him reading & call those things hobbies. I can tell you what Shadow thinks of those things: they are bare necessities, just as much as breathing & sleeping. the exertion of excess energy is physiologically necessary to vent steam, & meditation keeps him focused & his mind unburdened - however unburdened a soul like Shadow could ever be. the same could be said for Shadow's relentless hunger for knowledge. he devotes a lot of time to pursuing medical knowledge for example & attributes the time spent as just another necessity to do his job of "protecting the world" well.
there is one exception to this, & that is Shadow's motorcycle. initially a tongue-in-cheek gift from Rouge, over the years he has outfitted it with the most high-tech, cutting edge (illegal) parts, & he takes very, very good care of it. despite the fact she gifted it to him during some of the worst years of his life, that is actually the exact reason Shadow holds it in such high regard. for all intents & purposes, his bike was the first thing that was his. in a life where he was never entitled to anything except his own body, having something of his own felt like it was the most important thing in the world. Shadow likes the roar of his motorcycle on an empty highway because the purr of the engine in his bones makes him feel alive, even if his ears ring afterwards. it's a sensation that running or skating with his shoes cannot provide.
given that Shadow is such an unreliable narrator - the whole reason I opted to answer these questions out of character, as he would never be so forthcoming with anyone nor is he self-aware enough to even be able to discuss himself with such honesty - I would be inclined to say he isn't even aware that he does derive pleasure from the things I mentioned above. the introduction of other characters to his inner world such as Sonic & Amy does change the above a bit; Sonic, for example, gently encourages Shadow's curiosity, & he even finds himself enjoying the spontaneity of their random trips - there is nothing to stop them from going anywhere they want, so why not? (there is a memory of someone buzzing in his heart, but whom?) on the other hand, Shadow might enjoy leaning against the wall & watching the surety of Amy's hands while she bakes or cooks, such that he feels something warm in his chest when he passes a bakery in the city & is hit with the smell of macaroons. their company brings Shadow out of his isolation, albeit it's a process that takes many years.
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I don't talk about Shadow/Rouge much, mainly because there is a lovely Rouge that I hope will come back around someday, but I do think their relationship is ... complicated. fandom leaps at any chance to categorize a pairing as romantic/platonic/familial/antagonistic, with no room for nuance (one of my biggest gripes about modern fandom, to be honest; it sterilizes queerness while also promoting blatantly Western ideas about relationships). to Shadow, Rouge is not so much a friend or a love interest insofar as a comrade. coworker blanches the intimacy of their bond, which has been forged & hardened by near-apocalyptic circumstances on three occasions: SA2, Heroes, & 06 (technically Sh05 as well, if you take the route where Shadow encounters her). the Metal Virus technically counts here, too, I suppose, but I am hardly inclined to incorporate comic canon onto this blog, as the character writing is messy, & I am already grappling with the shitty characterization of Shadow bequeathed to us by Forces & the like. nevertheless, comrade(-in-arms) emphasizes what brings him & Rouge together more often than not, which is the less-than-illustrious reality of their "careers" - Shadow's career being that of a kind of forced labor, but I digress.
replaying Heroes has highlighted this ... interesting bond that Rouge & Shadow share. Rouge's behavior here is what puts Shadow off from truly trusting her for so long, given that she knew who he was & deliberately withheld that information from him. to be sure, she couldn't have been sure if Shadow was real or not, but given what he knows of Rouge - her valuing of information as priceless currency, to be exact - he can't help but feel that her lies by omission were a form of manipulation. she was more than happy to follow in Shadow's wrathful, destructive stead if it meant she could fulfill her own goals; this, too, is true of SA2, given she is revealed as a spy. Rouge, however, is granted a special kind of clemency, since Shadow understands better than anyone the stark realities of the dog-eat-dog world of espionage (with a clearer mind, he chalks her behavior up to matters of survival - that is to say, mechanisms that have become so practiced they are integral to your being; Rouge's handling of the matter was merely one of those mechanisms.)
by no means is this a criticism of Rouge's character. there's no point in casting moral judgment on a fictional character first of all, & second of all, I don't blame Rouge for doing what she has to to survive. I just want to point out that Rouge's mercurial loyalty (or rather, consistent loyalty only to herself) is what renders the erasure of 06 all the more tragic; there is a world where she pledged her loyalty to Shadow, only for it to not matter in the end. I don't think Shadow ever heard these words. regardless, Rouge & Shadow are rarely seen together outside of "work," & even then, that's only when G.U.N deems it appropriate to pair them together; Shadow (& subsequently Omega) work quite efficiently as Rouge's vanguard. once in a blue moon does Shadow show up unannounced at her penthouse, & Rouge has learned that means one of two things: there is a good chance the world is ending/about to end, or Shadow is about to end up on the news.
while Rouge has certainly loosened up around Shadow, their relationship is still transactional to an extent; Rouge won't just give him anything because he asks for it, not without repayment in his muscle. she is highly prized for her access to intelligence for a reason, & the sad truth is that she must always be thinking of herself to protect herself - this much was true before Shadow even entered the picture, & that doesn't change just because she has the ostensible Ultimate Lifeform on speed dial. this doesn't mean their relationship is devoid of any love, or that it is strictly professional, but it is rather a grim acknowledgment of the world they live in; you can't just go around giving away yourself for free. for Rouge & Shadow, it's their bodies. the last bastions of their autonomy.
I'm realizing I should probably elaborate upon Shadow's relationship with G.U.N., given that I frequently reference it one way or another without ever really expanding upon what exactly is meant when I say "Shadow works for G.U.N." it is much more nebulous than simply employer & employee; arguably, the phrase "Shadow is indentured to G.U.N" would be more apt, & calling it "employment" feels both reductive & deceptive. the very nature of Shadow's relationship to G.U.N. concedes an inherent objectification of his being, & as such his "employment" with them requires a desertion of his personhood to some extent. this isn't surprising; as I've mentioned many times before, Shadow's willing to compromise himself to extreme degrees to achieve his goals. "once a weapon, always a weapon." as such, I would go as far as to say that his job is not just self-destructive but anathematic to the fiber of his being.
I believe that Shadow's association with G.U.N was retconned relatively recently, but I am hardly following the comics these days, nor am I really interested in whatever SEGA is doing with their "modern" interpretation of the character. to me, "modern" in this context refers to anything after StH06, as that bookends the dark era, at least when we discuss Shadow. Shadow is markedly different (sterilized) in his following appearances; one need only point to "cowards run, I win," which is, in my opinion, an exercise in monumental hubris, especially after the embarrassing stint of pisspoor decision-making that led him to spare Infinite's life. it's not Shadow's hubris that I take issue with - whatever flaws Shadow possesses will naturally stand in sharp relief to the otherwise Christ-like qualities that he carries owed to his Chaos energy - it's the fact this occurs quite literally months after the entire world is at war. a war that he caused, albeit incidentally. that aside, I would like to clarify that in no way am I making a moral statement about Shadow's affiliation with an entity that is arguably analogous to the U.S military (but also U.N? what exists of Sonic Geopolitics tm is a wreck); this is fiction at the end of the day, & I am not in the business of encouraging you to believe Shadow is a good person one way or another - he isn't very interested in human moral frameworks, either. Shadow walks in the direction of his own moral compass.
firstly, let me just get this out of the way: Shadow does not like G.U.N, nor is his affiliation with them any indication of absolution on his behalf. Shadow is acutely aware that they not only killed the person he loves, but were also solely responsible for his miserable, wretched existence. this in of itself is why working for them is self-destroying.
secondly, my iteration of Shadow's induction into G.U.N was hardly voluntary. to give context within canon, the ending of Shadow's game (what I usually refer to as Sh05) sees him onboard the ARK, parting ways with his past. given that the next appearance of Shadow shows him executing an operation for G.U.N after an indeterminable period of time, what I think Sonic Team was trying to imply was that Shadow works G.U.N now simply because he will not let his past dictate his future anymore. look how healed he is; he's setting his vengeance aside to work for his oppressors! my issue lies with the fissures this creates within Shadow's character: given his rigorous adherence to justice, I can't imagine that he would shrug his shoulders after clapping hands with the man who caused the ARK raid in the first place, nor would he don any sort of military medals with pride, whatever he may say about "moving on from the past." the reasoning for his (I assume voluntary) employment with G.U.N is not clear nor is it ever expanded upon, at least to my knowledge. given that the franchise swiftly pivoted in an entirely different direction following Sth06's cratering failure, I suppose we will never know where they wanted to go with it.
there were really two routes I could go with this: on one hand, I could nix it entirely. this led me to believe Shadow would act as some kind of rogue vigilante (in pursuit of a promise he made on the whim of a dying girl), but being a vigilante, as Batman has taught us, requires resources. maybe, I thought, he would work with G.U.N as an... "independent contractor" on occasion. furthermore, any access to their resources would only be made possible through Rouge, & his relationship with her on those matters is paradoxically intimate & transactional (as they are both soldiers). on the other hand, I could work with it, as making decisions that defy the moral fibers of our being is part of the human condition. also, it's more interesting than saying Shadow just hangs out with the other two-thirds of Team Dark as his found family, as fanon is wont to do. I like my men seasoned with a burnt edge of trauma & terrible coping mechanisms, after all. get that man a chainsmoking habit.
how did Shadow end up working for G.U.N, then? my last post elaborated a bit on what occurred after the destruction of the Black Comet, insofar as Shadow was left highly weakened by 1) the lack of sleep; 2) the psychic stress that came from Black Doom's attempts to fracture his mind; 3) the power drainage from killing his father. while the intricacies of Shadow's immortality will be reserved for another post, I'll keep it short here: he is not indestructible, just resilient. no matter the manner you break him apart, he always comes back together. combine this with a highly persistent & vindictive G.U.N spearheaded by a manic commander with a fifty-year chip on his shoulder - Shadow had been working with Black Doom to (unknowingly) colonize the planet until he double-crossed him, after all - it was as simple to them as a war of attrition. Shadow's easier to catch when his Chaos reserves are drained, he's tired (& thus prone to making tactical mistakes, as anyone is), & he's alone. in theory, Shadow could have killed every soldier they threw at him & ran to the ends of the Earth, but his morals toward unnecessary slaughter aside, he realized that wasn't a life he wanted to live - one spent in hiding, eyes cast over his shoulder, trying to escape the metastatic clutches of the most powerful technocratic organizations in the world.
G.U.N was quite surprised by Shadow's surrender. Shadow walked out onto the war-torn street with his hands raised above his head, swaying on his feet, in grim acceptance of his fate. they had intended to lock him away in stasis like they had when he'd fallen to Earth fifty years prior, but they were struck with a realization: hey, this is our property. Shadow successfully outmaneuvered G.U.N's greatest tacticians & strategists several times over the course of about six months, if he didn't outright repel their forces single-handedly. claiming a stake to Shadow's body seems rather purposeless; you lay claim to land or resources, not a living creature. with a healthy dose of blackmail though (which was silently dealt to Shadow in grainy images of Rouge, Amy, Sonic, Cream, as well as a rather sardonic gesture to his broken limiters), Shadow had no choice but to acquiesce.
it's not that Shadow is powerless to defy their claim to him, it's simply that it's conducive to his greater agenda, &, well... more tragically, it feels correct to Shadow, for his body to be wielded in the manner of a gun, or the cannon that he obliterated the Black Legion with. after all, this was the mindset he reverted to during his attempted assassination with Cosmo, as committing to such self-destructive endeavors require an immense degree of dissociation from himself. Shadow's assassination of Cosmo also saw his repetition compulsion playing out in a more aggressive, twisted key - instead of being the helpless onlooker or her savior, he donned the mantle of her murderer.
so, Shadow attempted to make peace with his situation. his position in G.U.N is rather nebulous - calling him an agent is misleading (even though that is his official designation), as he is deployed in the same manner as a weapon, which means his application is both broad & diverse. most of the time his operations see him as the “vanguard,” though there are times his skills are used for either espionage or SAR. despite everything, working with G.U.N has its perks: Shadow can keep an eye on them, utilizing his low rank/nebulous position as leverage; he has a lowly stipend; he can harness their resources at will; he can build alliances; he can access otherwise inaccessible intelligence; &, most significantly, he has some of the world's most renowned scientists at his disposal. if Shadow had struck out alone, he would have a very hard time adjusting or replacing his limiters - their technology is not just highly coveted, but also very difficult to replicate, & they are composed of rare materials. G.U.N can only replicate them because they have Gerald's blueprints, but their design is nigh inscrutable because they were created in a fit of mania by him.
Shadow could go to Ivo, but his relationship with Ivo following the events of Sh05 is deteriorated at best, unsalvageable at worst. he would much rather negotiate his personhood with G.U.N than be in arrears with a madman whose IQ borders 300 & thus could probably outpace Shadow on his worst day. for my non-Sonic mutuals, all you need to know about Shadow & Eggman is that they have a very tenuous relationship due to the following: 1) Eggman believes Shadow is owed to him as an heirloom of his grandfather (Shadow's creator) Gerald & 2) Eggman tried to manipulate Shadow into believing he was not actually Shadow, but a robot replica. as I've mentioned before, manipulating Shadow to such extremes typically leads to crashouts of the apocalyptic variety. Ivo is alive at rotcalypse incorporated for plot reasons & because it would make Sonic very mad at him, & Shadow trembles in trepidation of no one except the guy who nearly had his entire being cannibalized by cyberspace & still smiled through it. also, the leverage alchemized by Sonic's ability to Turn God & Shadow's Catholic Guilt most certainly helps.
some other miscellaneous information about Shadow's relationship with G.U.N that you can leverage if you'd like during plotting: he always has a burner phone & he blitzes through them like candy. he also works dutifully & rigorously in establishing alliances; as such, there are safehouses for him dotted all over the world, offered to Shadow by people he has aided. G.U.N has oh-so generously provided him with a place to live, too: a government-subsidized apartment that is as about as ramshackle as it is desolate, & since Shadow's way of living is quite spartan, the impression it leaves on you is one of loneliness & destitution. prior to Forces, his apartment was located in Central City, though presently he begrudgingly resides in the twice-rebuilt Westopolis, inhabited by citizens who cross the street when they walk by him because they're afraid of him. no, he does not have guns stashed away in his apartment, & even if there are assassins bold enough to try (& there are), Shadow intentionally leaves his "home" unguarded because he is the hidden armory. but I still make jokes about Shadow's Benelli, because I think the implication of the Ultimate Lifeform yielding to something as primitive as a gun is very, very amusing because of the sheer absurdity.
🗡️ DAGGER — what is something or someone you know you can't afford to lose? how far are you willing to go to make sure you don't lose it/them?
I could talk at length about the importance of Sonic, Rouge, Omega, Amy etc to Shadow, but I fear that I may be growing a bit too predictable on this blog! (& I've already spoken at length about the importance of love to Shadow's character; the "lengths" Shadow will go to to protect those he loves are both extensive & well-documented on this blog) so I'm actually going to pivot & talk about something else: his autonomy.
I've mentioned before that Shadow is vastly territorial over his self-agency. fitting, given that his self-agency was the first thing he gained & lost in his life, & that he suffered its loss again & again. first, when he was born; second, when he was [re]born fifty years later (remember that his autonomy was merely an illusion, for he was acting on corrupted - or even utterly artificial - impulses, memories, & emotions); third, when Black Doom approached him & manipulated him; & fourth, when Mephiles showed him a glimpse of his future fate. Mephiles is lucky to come out of that unscathed - Shadow, after all, has a documented history of [self]-destruction when he thinks his agency has been encroached upon...
to put it candidly, Shadow would sooner commit suicide than allow his autonomy to be stolen again. after all, that was what he was doing when he was helping Sonic fight the Finalhazard. to be sure, it was a combination of things - a cancerous amalgamation of shame, grief, rage (toward Gerald, GUN, & more broadly the world) - but the chief motivator of his self-destructive todestrieb was most certainly his shame that centered around failing Maria & allowing himself to believe the thoughts & memories Gerald had put in his head. the events of the Black Arms' invasion actually sees this shame/rage playing out in another key - that anger was outwardly directed, & I think the difference there lies in the fact Black Doom was a tangible target, & one that he felt justified in destroying.¹
so... homicide? somehow that doesn't feel like the worst thing Shadow could do to you.
¹ I would be remiss to not acknowledge the other physical factors that went into Shadow's spiral here, though. while Shadow is immensely durable, his body is not. immortality =/= shatterproof. Shadow can & has "died" from physical wounds, for example. he just comes back. on this blog, I have established that the invasion lasted ~2 weeks, from (to speak in game terms) the Westopolis stage to the "true" ending, in which Shadow destroys the Black Comet. Shadow had not slept once that entire time, & had already had trouble sleeping months before the actual invasion itself; that is to say he was functionally an insomniac when the actual events of the game began. furthermore, Black Doom's control over Shadow - an effort to embed him into the hivemind - was psychically damaging, leading to moderate, chronic TBI-induced psychosis that took about six months to "resolve." to put it simply, he was Unwell beforehand.
fitting that I'd return from my intermittent hiatus to discuss Super Shadow, given my obsession with the form in of itself. I have been dwelling on thoughts about it for a couple of months now - deeply inspired by Sonic 3's depiction of Super Shadow, despite all my other gripes with the movie - indecisive in my handling of it, though there are a few canon divergent points I'd like to mention about it.
canon implies (& fanon infers) that Super Shadow functions in a similar capacity to Super Sonic, at least in SA2. that is to say the extent of the ritual of the transformation requires the seven Emeralds, a clarity of focus, & a pure heart. from the cutscene in SA2, I inferred that their transformations happened simultaneously but disparately, & though I was never quite content with that creative decision, I followed it regardless because it was the most sensible at the time. I find it interesting that Super Shadow is shown scantly, appearing after Shadow's debut only in Sh05 & then StH06, the latter of the two being obliterated from canon anyway, meaning that the current [game] timeline has established Super Shadow's appearance only twice. I also thought that if Super Shadow were to appear again, he would certainly feature in Generations, & the absence of him felt both glaring & deliberate. I would also like to reiterate that Rot's canon is thoroughly intertwined with the anime, so if we are operating off rotcalypse canon, the natural inference would be that Super Shadow also appeared twice in the Metarex arc ... presumably.
the most important change I will be making to the canon is the removal of Super Shadow's appearance in Sh05 entirely. thus, it is imperative to understand that the form has only appeared in these instances & under highly specific circumstances, which I will expand upon in a second: (1) on the ARK with Sonic; (2) in the final Metarex fight with Dark Oak (& not in the prior fight against Super Sonic); (3) Sh06, despite its non-existence; & (4) some indeterminate time in the future, following the War in Forces, after careful & deliberate reconciliation with the form on Shadow's end (remember, the Super transformation requires purity of heart). what circumstance do all of these situations share? Shadow's alliance with Sonic.
I would scruple to label Shadow as "pure of heart." ** it's not impossible, & though the closest to this purity was attained on the ARK, Shadow is still separate from Sonic in that sense. thus, for a time, Shadow can really only attain the Super form when Sonic wills it. Sonic's will is what spurred Shadow's transformation in all three instances of Super Shadow's appearance (& technically the fourth, though I haven't really sat down & outlined the circumstances that warrant it - however, I do know that it was independent of Sonic's will). this form of Super Shadow, an extension of Sonic's will, unsurprisingly mirrors Super Sonic in its aesthetic qualities: red eyes, golden, steely, though I'd argue Shadow falls just short of saintly; he is more unsettling, akin to an eschatological figure or a portent/omen (of an apocalypse). their silhouettes are nigh indistinguishable, & deliberately so - not only are they two halves of the same being (or a third, in 06's case), Shadow still remains an epigone.
when Shadow achieves the form of his own volition & power, that iteration is truer to Shadow's heart, so it aligns more with his appearance in SA2. really, just an indulgence of mine because I love the platinum look so much & the creative twist with the pinks they used in Sonic 3.
** just thought I'd add that purity is still an important aspect to Shadow's character, & I don't intend to erase that. rather, when I refer to Shadow's "purity," I really mean it in a chemical sense; think of an undiluted, highly concentrated substance. that is what is pure about Shadow, whether it be love, vengeance, rage, or desire.
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the idea of Ame’s Sonic borrowing Shadow’s debit card while he is away on an op is deeply amusing to me. Shadow cannot trust him to feed himself reliably. take this square of plastic. funds are deposited in it bi-weekly. the last transaction I made was for a pack of Camels two weeks ago but I only purchase them occasionally so the bank knows I am still alive. then in the middle of the night a week later while he’s catching a few minutes of sleep he gets a text: do you want to authorize this transaction of $930? Shadow doesn’t know what the fuck Sonic is buying. he hits yes anyway. on his busted burner flip phone. so it actually takes about 9 presses of a button.
Shadow himself is inherently palimpcestuous, carrying the impressions written before him (the indentations of writing, narratives, memories pressed into the paper underneath it, even after it’s been effaced). Maria. Sonic. Super Sonic. Gerald. Ivo. he writes his own. it doesn’t matter. if you squint, the old dips & depressions still remain, distorting the fresh ink. the way an adaptation carries the ghost of its original text. the way the original text is forever contoured by the adaptation. the way you cannot “unsee” it after you have seen it; the intertwinement of Sonic & Shadow cannot ever be unmade. is it that Sonic has Shadow’s rigid jawbone when he’s angry or is it that Shadow has inherited Sonic’s weighted, concentrated brow? it doesn't matter. the question has been posed; as such, it cannot become unasked.
places you will find Shadow: on the roof of a high-rise. glass cracking underfoot. between bodies frenetic with euphoria (a post-war bacchanal). in a derelict nuclear power plant, Geiger counter awry to the tune of immune flesh. in the office of “his” apartment, hundreds of photos tacked together obsessively. in the morgue. in an alleyway, next to a safehouse three thousand miles from “home”. on scaffolding, shoulder knotted from twelve hours of hunting through a scope. in the mirror. knee-deep in sewage & ruins. in your shadow, subsuming. against the wall of an intimate gathering, [your] sentry.
often on this blog [in narration, or in discussion of Shadow's psyche] you will notice that I tend to highlight the latency of the "subconscious," which diegetically Shadow defers to as the monstrous or the hidden, as he believes it is charged with dark potential energy & vested within the "hindbrain" or the instinctual, stripped of higher cognition. the latency, the inaccessibility of what psychoanalysts deemed the subconscious is what frightens him; the subconscious, the Id, is primality personified, & primality in Shadow's mind is irrevocably tied with the Black Legion. this was a concept inculcated in him by scientists whose careers crystallized during a time where psychoanalysis was the dominant discipline within psychology, & as such it shaped his understanding of himself.
I am not so much concerned with Freudian constructs as I am the effects of it on Shadow & the societal conditions that encouraged both its development & dissemination. I am no psychologist. what I learned about Freud was strictly within an anthropological context, so I'm sure a well-versed psychologist would probably give me a few weird glances here & there. alas, this is a silly blog about an alien hog, so I tend to give myself grace for gaps in my knowledge. it is more so the delineation/cleaving of "selves" that appeal to me & have the greatest influences on Shadow; the idea that there is a higher, more refined self (the ego) & a mediator (the superego) above a hedonistic nucleus (the id). in fact, the above doctrine kind of shapes Shadow's thinking about himself.
I believe that one reasoning that can account for psychoanalysis' popularity is the idea that there is a "primal" mind within all of us, one that steers us toward pleasure & away from destruction. in short, this is a very useful concept in a society that uses shame as a form of social control. an imperialistic society that, at its core, is two-faced: civilized & uncivilized. shame is a very powerful force within Shadow's character - in a sense, it is a kind of hauntological force, too. shame for the past, yes, but shame for the future that will never be; its ghosts are all around him.
Shadow, above all, values rationality (logos) above pleasure, hedonism. he is quite literally like that one post "diet until I am incapable of comprehending desire" as a person. in the narrative, this is not so subtly employed (by me) by Shadow's lack of tastebuds. in his inability to taste, he is deprived of a necessary component of human connection: breaking bread with others, the loving nature of sharing a meal, the sweetness of fruit between lovers. Shadow believes desire, especially needs of the sexual/erotic (or, more broadly, the Freudian Eros), are innate, impure impulses. he scoffs when he sees the way it governs other people. yet, this place is not just inhabited by the sensual, it is inhabited by the violent, too; I often say that Shadow detests unnecessary acts of brutality & decries them, at their core, as unnecessary energy expenditures. while that is true, it is a smaller part of a larger narrative he sells himself - Shadow is hyperempathetic & as such, existing in such a violent society (& employing such violence) is anathematic to his soul.
nevertheless, Shadow paradoxically employs violence at his whim. he is unafraid to use violence to achieve an end despite its toilings inside of him, but if he had the vocabulary to explain it: well, it's not violence that stems from impulsive pleasure, it is a utilitarian kind, the straightest & most energy-efficient path from point A to point B. his approach in these matters is quite surgical. "if there were a method other than violence," he'd argue, "I would use it, but this society has deemed it its primary language. violence is a last resort, but it is both preemptive & reactive." (this "purity" of Shadow's mind is its most lethal, its sharpest aspect.) to put it simply, he strikes down foes before they rise high enough for Sonic & his ilk to notice them, he dirties his hands so the people he loves don't have to, so they can live happy. that is his "job" at its most fundamental premise - hunting shadows. it is the most painful, hemorrhaging expression of love, yet one fitting for a weapon developed by neoimperialistic superpowers. I want to emphasize that, here: Shadow comes home covered in blood, both his & not his, smelling of gunpowder, because he loves & that is the only expression of love he can speak at its core. what does he love? the planet. a romanticized but lost conceptualization of humanity that exists just outside of his reach, instilled within him by someone who only exists as a half-baked memory & a lost radio transmission. he finds that again in Sonic which renews his efforts toward protecting the planet (& reconsidering his methods of protection, as well as challenging this idea of a rotten core) but I digress.
I am deviating a bit here, so I'd like to return to why I even wrote all of this. but this hierarchy of selves - the idea that there is a "primal" self within us - is innately connected to the Black Legion, in Shadow's mind, & is brutalizing to himself. to Shadow, his Black Legion "side" personifies all the worst qualities of himself & others: it is needlessly violent (he shudders at this), it is impulsive & paroxysmal, & most importantly, it is hungry. it is representative of that which he must avoid. it is not that Shadow deals with himself in hemispheres - one half Chaos, one half Black Legion (though I use this language for ease of reading) - it's more that Black Legion is a fetid nucleus embedded in an otherwise crystalline terrain of Chaos, & Shadow must excise the rot at all costs with an obsessive-compulsive fervor. that is a truer representation of Shadow's self (sans the parts about rot, as I prefer to use language that is not so nearly charged when talking about a self), but that rot is gestated in the "id", he thinks. it is a source of shame in its primal existence, & it is a rot that calls to him more often than he would like to admit. it must be maintained & "logicked" out of existence when it rears its head, tamed & domesticated. it must be starved "out", laid siege to (by higher cognition), among other things. this kind of approach to himself is nothing but damaging, but Shadow will not reach true clarity until he accepts all facets of himself, especially those he perceives as rotten. his disdain toward his Black Legion self is also rooted in biological essentialism which is another harmful belief system but I digress yet again & don't have the energy to write 500 more words decrying such a thing because I know you all will understand.
❝ i’ll always have a minute for you. maybe even two. ❞
the night, as ever, haunts him in post-traumatic palimpsest: distended umbrae, pareidolic cavalcades, nightmares imprinting afterimages in his vision. it drives him to the edge of the world, / a derelict city nobody deemed worthy of saving after the War, lost to machines & chassis & broken glass. [he remembers this place for one very specific reason: their mise en scène: ritualized violence, split knuckles, aching shoulders. he swears that there are eyes, following.]
there are times Sonic’s kindness often feels like make-belief, / his warmth a radio transmission sailing across time & space in hapless search of an ear, an outstretched palm—--are you receiving? Shadow doesn’t know if he is, his body shaped as a prime apparatus for bloodshed, / efficient as a slaughterhouse, not an inch for song nor ecstasy. destruction is its inherited primacy, / all the kinetic fervor of a discharged gun. so, when the cogs grind, it sounds like bone against bone, incisor against incisor, metal against metal, / a distress signal in a vascular key. it might be that he’s utterly insulated from it, he thinks, the warmth: what sits between himself & Sonic is a permafrost miles thick, / a citadel colonized by a cabal of obsessive-compulsive ghosts, their agonies stirred by the threat of a thaw [for Polaris beleaguers his doorstep, vandalizing with its pantheon of vernal blue skies & springtide; it comes with a breezy laugh, a zephyr, doting on two syllables. Sha·dow, a monstrosity unmade, / light passed onto his lunar face]. & yet—--the detested, beloved “yet”, the impossibility that is attached to Sonic’s name—---his trigger finger, usually objectified in its infallibility, haunts over send: if I called, would you come? / the answer arrives to him not in language, but in a half-remembered halcyon that reverberates between a pair of ribs continents away & goes down too sweetly: [Her] laughter, [Her] scintillations, guttatim: a narrative [re]writing over itself, different blood circling the same drain.
& Sonic comes, of course he does, / all fulgor & vapid fatuity, looked upon by his sepulchral eye. he might have been there all along. Shadow considers rejecting him, now that an hour has passed since his initial message (a hand extended): I have a perfect view, if you’re not busy. I made a mistake. this wasn’t supposed to happen. something stops him, though, & it’s not the monster staring back at him in the mirror [red-eyed, wearing inaction like rigor mortis, its veins pulsing sempiternally with Stygian blood], but a spark: were he born with a soul, he might point to that, / but he concedes it to the hindbrain, instead. a limbic spasm, / impressions of memory, the real ones, sprouted from fecund light beyond corruption. his fingers, / hours ago having dispatched a last breath, curl around emptiness. Sonic would fit right between, his mind intrusively supplies, neck & all, / the way he's fit so seamlessly into everything else. “...” he attempts speech, but what wants to come out is vulnerable, / primal, want so aggrieved in Shadow’s intentional starvation of it, it claws & dryheaves & garrotes at the premise of Sonic’s sweetness. it reanimates, / as if impishly inspired by insurrection & the saccharin. more aggravatingly, this temptation resists Shadow’s siege. it is unbecoming of a pure body to want; there is nothing it cannot give to itself—---that is the essence of its purity, the body as a last bastion of the inviolate. Shadow tries to rive himself from it, / but Sonic smells like freesia, rain, wind, all the places he passed through to arrive here, blemished by the distended umbrae of this urban ruin. […] & Shadow cannot resist that, the self-sacrifice or the meat.
I had a dream, he almost says, that I was so angry, I crushed a city under my thumb. It was so easy. I asked you to put me down, to kill me, & you did. my heart was outside of my chest. I couldn’t breathe. I wasn’t myself. why did you?
Shadow turns away to the ruin below. there is something on his cheek, / shed by his ferrous tearducts. a simple expression of chemical buildup—---as machines vent steam. or, as he viciously scrubs his face (convinced there is blood, wiping the scene of the crime), he thinks of vehicles leaking fluid when there is something disgustingly wrong with their innards, / & he feels the wrongness inside of him, too, parts in misalignment, / so fervent he thinks Sonic must witness this flagellation on his flesh. the want for closeness that shifts seismically, / preying on buckling seams—---it must be under his skin, like maggots.
"I’ll always have a minute for you. maybe even two." @lightdash
“there is something you don’t understand,” Shadow says instead. it is not cold, just aggrieved, emaciated, / blood-red eyes pinning him, unblinking. the moonlight casts dark penumbrae beneath his sockets, / limning only the sharpest, most serrate edges. yet there’s a tenderness that belies this indurate display, a defiance of iron creed: his hand upon Sonic’s cheek, only a breath between. he pauses, / anticipating that his columnar body will turn to salt. such is the nature of event horizons. “... when a minute passes for you, five thousand pass for me.”
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Shadow sees the truest reflection of himself fragmented into two dualities: Chaos, Black Legion. Chaos feels incandescent, almost holy, unquantifiable & extant; adjacent to godhood (glancing at Super Sonic), he characterizes himself as wholly splintered from it, an abyssal cistern of Chaos energy (the correct verbiage here is disciple, scion, though Shadow doesn't "carry out" Chaos' will as much as Super Sonic does, but he recognizes Its significance to his life). the Black Legion half is entirely excised - that is to say, disregarded, distal, the existence of it [when acknowledged] vaguely dysphoric at best, brutalizing at worst. until it isn't. killing his father whilst Super Shadow was a dirty move - he didn't need to be Super to do it - Super Shadow is a redundant entity - but it was a way of cruelly spurning Black Doom, who desired the unerring love & bloody devotion Shadow so freely offers to others.