#asp3nn yapping

when mono finally makes it down the tv hallway and sets the thin man free (despite six's repeated efforts to keep him away), they both run into a nearby room and hide. six gets found and reaches out to mono for help, and he makes no effort to save her. after an entire game of the two of them helping and growing to trust each other, mono hides away while six gets captured.

now she's been betrayed by her only friend and warped into an unrecognizable monster with nothing but her music box to comfort her. returning from the beginning when she was locked away in the hunter's basement alone, six's music box is the one item that offers her peace in the horrific world she lives in.

and then that same kid shows up. she tries to offer him the same comfort the music box gives her, and in response he breaks it. from her perspective, the one person she had finally been able to trust in the world just left her to die and then destroyed her most important item after she offered it to him to share. after all that, why is it so hard to imagine that a traumatized child might decide to take revenge for that under stress (and who's to say she can trust him again after he abandoned her)? children can be selfish and impulsive and mean, they haven't yet learned how to make the right decisions all the time.

today the specific topic is belle and sage. idw whenever metal gets fixed i need him IMMEDIATELY added to the belle and sage sibling drama because he is such an interesting perspective in this.

belle rejected eggman from her life to pursue her own goals. she was technically created by him, but due to her circumstances was able to choose her freedom and autonomy instead of being another badnik. makes me think about sonic heroes and neo metal (as most things do). i think this particular incident is notable for being THE instance in which metal sonic takes his freedom like belle did. but unlike belle, his circumstances and goals didn't allow him to move on with his life. he was defeated by sonic and his loser friends (affectionate) for trying to take over the world, and ended up being controlled by eggman again. following this, eggman took every shred of the individuality metal fought for, from his voice to his ability to rebel in the first place. belle is, in this way, what metal could have been, had his circumstances allowed it.

on the other hand, sage is the world's most obvious favorite child right. that's gotta be terrible from metal's perspective. he was always essentially doomed to be a disappointment, since his entire purpose is doomed by the narrative itself. metal will never surpass sonic. he will never fulfill the sole reason for his existence. sage was not created for such a purpose like metal was. from the moment sage was created, she was free from this impossible standard to live up to. free from the constant fear of failing her sole purpose. she was given a voice, and she is freer than metal sonic will ever be. (note that freedom is the essential quality that fundamentally defines sonic and excludes metal from surpassing him.)

what confuses me is the double standard. so many people saw six kill the bully in the school (which would have killed her and/or mono if she didn't) and used it as "evidence" that she was some horrible monster who was evil from the start. they saw six breaking inanimate mannequin fingers in the hospital out of boredom and took it as a confirmation of her innate bloodlust and cruelty.

but the player can easily choose to have mono show actual cruelty by burning the doctor unnecessarily, and none of the people i saw ever held that against him. (the actual canon outcome of this interaction is unknown, to my knowledge.) now i certainly dont think hes any kind of evil monster either, i think he's just a kid trying to survive who has been forced by the world around him to take drastic measures for his own safety, just like six.

but to this day you'll find innocent baby mono believers. mono did not do all that and be a complex, morally grey character just to be boiled down to some shy uwu cinnamon roll.

i think this double standard obviously comes from the game's perspective and many players' lack of ability to see that of six. they play as mono, see the game from his point of view, and control his actions, so obviously many people would perceive his actions through a far more forgiving lens. we see mono going through the entire pale city and freeing her from the signal tower, not six being betrayed by her only friend and warped into a monster all alone and having her comfort item destroyed. we see six dropping mono for no apparent reason, because the game trusts its audience to be able to look from her perspective and see the pain mono unintentionally caused her throughout the game.

it's the same with surge. she wants so badly to be her own person, but she always falls back into the programming starline gave her. surge, modeled after sonic's personality and having been deeply traumatized by authority figures (starline) before, despises being told what to do. yet her pursuit of her own path leads her to doing exactly what starline wanted by 1. killing sonic and 2. replacing him as a "hero".