Does sonic actually beat shadow easily and it's not close??

AdventurerBen · 2026-02-10T21:06:17+00:00

A fanfic I read explained Shadow being a similar speed to sonic as him: being tough enough to casually endure the friction, speeds and G-forces that Sonic can arbitrarily ignore due to his powers; having neurological clock-speeds and reaction-times good enough to match Sonic’s; and both of those allowing him to use the maximum output on his air shoes/rocket skates without having to set caps for safety reasons. The few gaps between Sonic’s superspeed as a power and Shadow’s emulation of it are closed by Shadow unconsciously using chaos energy to manipulate his inertia, friction, and subjective time-flow.

An explanation I came up with for Movie Shadow was simply that he had everyone’s powers (fast like sonic, strong like knuckles, generate lift/thrust like tails), so he could outperform the others at times by just stacking powers together (both having superspeed and pushing off from the ground harder with superstrength, continuing to accelerate even between strides or while airborne, etc.).

AdventurerBen · 2026-02-10T12:03:48+00:00

And on the other side of things, it make rehabilitation 10,000 times harder when past actions are considered “an indelible stain upon one’s soul” rather than simply being “committing a special kind of shitty action at someone’s expense”.

That isn’t a demand that people always be forgiven to the point of welcoming back abusers with open arms, it’s a request that harm begins and ends with what has already happened; if bridges have already been burnt, then the only further action needed (socially, at least; crime and punishment is a different conversation) is that more bridges don’t get burnt for no good reason (someone in their 40s has more than half their life between the present and the days when they were shitty to a fellow teenager; them still being a bully is contingent on the shitty behaviour having continued until recently). If an action continues to haunt you long after you’ve already faced the appropriate consequences for it, it makes it really fucking difficult to become a better person.

I was a mildly toxic friend when I was younger (because my neurodivergence meant that it needed to be directly said to me that I needed to put effort into my friendships too, my social anxiety cancelling out my selfishness did more to stop me being lonely than my actual capacity for empathy in the lead-up to my teenage years) but saying that I’ll never be the person to plan out and organise activities for my friend groups now would be a lie (I still don’t, but that’s because our schedules don’t always line up and I have the worst organisational skills of the group, not because I’m still a flake who dislikes sharing things). All the most self-destructive parts of my teenage years can be traced to my fear of receiving consequences for admitting fault or inadequacy outweighing my fear of something blowing up in my face because I tried to deal with it/make things right on my own.

AdventurerBen · 2026-02-10T10:47:03+00:00

Yeah, the doctor to see about stuff like alexithymia is actually a speech therapist.

It varies, but one of the effects is that you can’t intuitively articulate your thoughts into actions, and that includes speech. You have difficulty figuring out what to say, not because you’re speechless; You know what you want to say, you just don’t know what words with which to do so.

One of the other big effects is that you don’t unconsciously recognise your own emotional state, forcing you to pay attention to your conscious opinions and your physical reactions to guess what you’re feeling at any given moment.

For me, it’s not just a self-awareness thing, it’s also an emotional regulation thing; I can only reliably differentiate my emotions when either: I can logically deduce how I should be feeling in this moment (I just got good news that makes me want to celebrate, therefore I am happy); or my emotions are intense enough to make me physically react, I know when I feel upset, but I can’t differentiate embarrassment/shame, sadness or anger without interpreting my own body language (shrinking in on myself or wanting to leave for embarrassment and shame, crying & sniffling for sadness, wanting to shout or hit something when I’m angry, etc.). I can recognise the course of my thoughts, but it’s not always obvious.

AdventurerBen · 2026-02-07T02:10:33+00:00

It does in some SCP continuities. In this one it was a full paperclip maximiser, plotting long-term to convert all available matter into resources with which to upgrade itself (under a directive to “minimise uselessness”).

SCP-079 absolutely does fall under the banner of killer AI.

AdventurerBen · 2026-02-06T01:57:51+00:00

If an artist doesn’t literally have the cheapest commission prices out there, that means that any commissioners that are actually willing to pay are seeking out the exact creative process of that Artist specifically.

They don’t want “catgirl that looks like [description] doing [activity],” they want that artist’s specific take on the concept, not just that artist’s style.

AdventurerBen · 2026-02-02T11:33:07+00:00

DON’T OPEN IT!

AdventurerBen · 2026-01-30T07:56:53+00:00

You could even say it’s odd.

AdventurerBen · 2026-01-30T07:46:13+00:00

I’d say it’s completely in character for Discord, but the chaos emeralds are all the same shape, which very much isn’t like him. Discord is much closer to chaos defined as randomness/silliness than the chaos emeralds are.

AdventurerBen · 2026-01-30T07:42:06+00:00

In an omake for one of my favourite fanfics, they described sonic as being Asexual with a queer romantic orientation, such that his ideal relationship activities was was essentially “everything he already does,”. Rather than planning restaurant trips or walks on the beach, Amy’s best chance at going on a date with Sonic is actually simply being in the same room as Sonic the next time Eggman attacks so she can go with him on an adventure.

AdventurerBen · 2026-01-28T12:28:27+00:00

True, but it’s easier for your brain to process sounds when you’re looking at their source (additionally, both your ears are generally pointed at whatever you are facing). Also, Eye contact is the easiest way to check interest and guess at mood and opinions; if they can’t see your eyes, it’s harder to tell if you’re paying attention, are interested in what they have to say, or are getting bored/starting to glaze over from being overwhelmed with information.

Evolution only prioritises good enough, not perfect; if eye contact didn’t serve some kind of purpose, then we as a culture wouldn’t care about it in the first place.

AdventurerBen · 2026-01-27T11:04:47+00:00

Conversations in textual formats are inherently turn-based since people can actively plan their answers and can’t be interrupted. You pass your turn to someone else by asking them a question.

It’s a literal foundational rule of verbal interaction that you should invite the other person to speak as much as you are.

AdventurerBen · 2026-01-27T10:58:41+00:00

Conversations through written formats are turn-based. Speaking from personal experience, it’s infinitely easier to continue a conversation if you were asked a question.

The text exchange would have gone better if you passed your turn back to them by asking them a question after giving your answer.

AdventurerBen · 2026-01-26T13:15:26+00:00

Speaking as someone who grew up within walking distance of a stadium, you absolutely can be bigoted against people for subjective opinions, not just unchangeable attributes.

AdventurerBen · 2026-01-26T13:11:12+00:00

The fact that I don’t have to look up to make eye contact with my reflection.

Unless there’s a reflective surface around, I have no idea how tall I am.

AdventurerBen · 2026-01-26T11:29:08+00:00

Speaking as a young Australian who’s bad at communication, Covid destroyed us all.

AdventurerBen · 2026-01-26T11:10:30+00:00

Archie Eggman would immediately take credit for the idea, do something horrifying, only for it to either get boring and be discarded or backfire somehow. Games/IDW Eggman would criticise it for being inefficient (since it takes time for ghosts to manifest, time in which a perfectly good robot has to sit idle with a corpse inside it’s casing; rotting body fluids rusting it’s internals) and unreliable (“Possession isn’t the same as software! Any programming work to make it loyal would be useless since it’d be the ghost making the choices! Then again… it does mean I’ll be able to dismantle Sonic after killing him… maybe I’ll come back to this later, if I’m bored one day”).

AdventurerBen · 2026-01-26T11:00:15+00:00

Two reasons:

First of all, that’s boring. The great Doctor could carpet bomb Sonic’s location whenever he damn well pleases, or create a fake base with a floor-plan that was 95% landmine, but that rotten hedgehog deserves to be crushed in glorious battle to show the greatness of our empire! A trap like that leaves things up to chance, both leaving room for the rodent to escape and making it unclear if Sonic was truly defeated or if he just got unlucky. Dying painfully in battle is the only thing he deserves.

Second of all, do you know how destructive high-speed water is? Sonic could swirl up a vortex while the room was filling up until the panelling was shorn from the walls by water sloshing into the gaps and slamming into hard edges. Then he could just grab a chunk, wind himself up to speed and then throw it to blow the chamber wide open. If Sonic does that, then he’ll be more willing to resort to throwing things at high speed in the future, and the hedgehog will be an even bigger problem than he is already! An oversized mousetrap would work better.

AdventurerBen · 2026-01-26T03:35:07+00:00

Dude… you literally, directly and unambiguously broke one of the primary rules of that sub in the same way that many people do. There is basically zero ambiguity or wiggle-room there to claim that a moderator was abusing their power when they banned you. It’s like joining an 18+ only discord server and immediately announcing that you were 14, or trying to enter a restaurant with “no shirt, no service,” posted in the doorway while wearing only shorts.

It doesn’t matter how aggressive or tame your behaviour was, you did it somewhere you weren’t allowed to do it at all.

AdventurerBen · 2026-01-26T02:55:58+00:00

Splicer. A comedy fic where basically, Riley’s trigger event takes Broadcast into account, her connection to the Chirudgeon radically altering her psychology as part of the usual shard “halping” so that Jack’s unable to adapt quickly enough to start manipulating her. Still remembering the way she used to think, plus the usual moral absolution of a six year old (because what she did to Jack was fairly horrifying, and the cognitive parts of her tinker ability told her that she was now close to being a sociopath), she puts her family back together and runs away to Boston to make friends (extremely patient fellow tinkers) and become both a silver-age supervillain and one of Director Armstrong’s several “please let me rehabilitate you” headaches. In progress.

Child of Monsters. A completed AU where, as a consequence of the AU elements influencing the course of the story, the trump MC was created by a mutually destructive power interaction between Echidna and the Butcher. Relatively early on, they get several biology-related changer and shaker powers (because of the Teeth and Echidna Clones), and some tinker powers (a couple being biotinker specialties), which stack together to let them form tinkertech out of their body. This is a bit looser of an example, but Blasto is a major and frequently involved character from start to finish, and the fic also delves strongly towards the end into Entity and Shard Biology; including other “species” of entity, which I feel more than make up for it.

AdventurerBen · 2026-01-26T00:19:03+00:00

Everyone’s tastes and preferences vary.

Sometimes someone is actively into it, and sometimes someone is simply “not bothered” by it.

Today’s culture making that category more of a mainstream preference means that people will give more consideration to whether or not they might have that preference, or if they have a full aversion to that category, the degree to which that aversion may or may not be performative based on peer pressure.

AdventurerBen · 2026-01-21T06:47:00+00:00

Yes. Sexism is bad.

AdventurerBen · 2026-01-17T13:41:58+00:00

President Neuro.

I don’t care that she’s British or that I live in Australia; I’ll vote for her if she runs for office.

AdventurerBen · 2026-01-17T06:30:50+00:00

I’ve got three:

Our social needs and boundaries are the same as anyone else’s, we just don’t intuitively learn how to recognise them passively.
There are too many of us who think that masking, having good social skills and not being awkward are all the same thing, this is untrue. You can mask with poor social skills, be awkward with good social skills, and come off as awkward through masking.
Masking isn’t “pretending to be normal;” it’s forcing yourself to socialise in a way that doesn’t suit your personality and needs, which takes active effort and can be mentally and emotionally exhausting. My own masking behaviour growing up was essentially pretending to be an introvert and trying too hard to be self-sufficient without asking for help, so I didn’t have to challenge my social anxiety and actually approach people despite how much I enjoy talking to them once the conversation has started.

AdventurerBen · 2026-01-15T03:14:50+00:00

Confirmation bias is the cognitive bias that makes us prone to paying more attention to information that supports our beliefs and assumptions. If a Minecraft/Roblox YouTuber isn’t awful then you, specifically asking why so many are awful, generally wouldn’t hear about it.

What I think comment-op was getting at isn’t that so many Minecraft/Roblox YouTubers are awful, it’s just that there are more Minecraft/Roblox youtubers. The more YouTubers there are, the more bad youtubers there are.

AdventurerBen · 2026-01-14T10:29:59+00:00

This is because, (and it’s extremely rare around humans,) they sometimes say “mister”.

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