A-A-S Featured Rant: Two Sides to Every Story

(I'm going to have to do this in an unorthodox manner, rather than the usual blog post, because for some bass-ackwards reason, DA has decided to not include the ability to incorporate images into group journals. So I'm hosting this blog on my own page, so that the images can still be used.


Anyway, this a is a rant that was written by , a fellow writer on the site. It is intended to not only offer a theory on why Fiona acts the way she does, as well as set a few things up for his own series.There are some minor spoilers around for the story, but nothing too late in the running. I'll be interspersing my own thoughts as well, for clarity's sake.)

Well it’s almost a year now since I have been writing these stories on DA and I think I should shed some light on why anyone would write all these stories about a comic character (Fiona Fox) that’s not even in the comic anymore. The short answer is the writers of the comic decided to force her character to the dark side to advance a story plot and I felt it was done in a rather cruel and unfair manner for a character that has been around for such a long time. I felt I should somehow continue the story that they dropped and put my twist on it. I’ve never done anything like this before but heck this is DA so I thought I’d give it a try.

But that’s too simple an explanation… here’s the long version:

First I feel I must state the obvious, Sonic Comics are meant for a younger audience. The characters are furry and cute and stories are usually pretty straight forward. However, in the background they do delve into the darker side of human nature on a certain level:  with war, extermination, slavery (Roboticizer), child soldiers (seriously these are kids fighting), and last but not least love (Yes love has a dark side). But we all know this is just a comic so try not to take it too seriously.

I didn’t read Sonic comics until about a year ago and the first Sonic comic I read was issue #172. I read it and thought WOW what a dramatic story line. It had action, it had some witty dialog, it had a lot of drama, and most importantly introduced me to the Sonic cast of characters. On the surface it looked like a story of betrayal caught red-handed and our two heroes, Sonic and Tails, taking the brunt of a heart wrenching breakup and betrayal. Betrayal is a VERY strong emotion and if you ever felt its sting you instantly know how deep it cuts. The end result being that Fiona defected from good to evil and joined the recently (re)created major villain of the comic series as his girl. I was naturally very curious as to how this came about so I went on to read the rest of the story line (backwards and forwards). I dissected the details of this issue and I found its logic convoluted, left to interpretation and some of it downright wrong. This spurred me into thinking about writing a story, just as a creative writing experiment, to see if I could tell a narrative for Fiona’s side which would fit into the story but show this in a different light. After all there are always two sides to a story in a love affair gone bad.

I don’t think any of this information is new and groundbreaking, although I haven’t seen anyone who has collected it and put into a format analysis like this.

First I like to go to the footnotes for the comic #172. Footnotes are supposed to be irrefutable concrete evidence of the truth

Here is Sonic’s big moment where he catches Fiona in her betrayal.

                      
Let's go back to issue #150 and #151 as it states. We all know the hero speaks the truth, or least we are led to believe it. First of all Fiona is not seen once or mentioned at all in #150 and #151, Sonic (or Anti-Sonic) hits on Mina (who spurs his advance), Amy (Which later in #151 she alludes to having “TLC” with Sonic), and Bunnie (who he ends up sleeping with, but not in that sort of way ~.^ ).

(Not that Penders haters won't try to convince you that it was that way.)

In #151 Anti-Sonic eventually ends up working with Rouge. So here we are looking back for that special moment that Fiona falls for Scourge (then Anti-Sonic) and it’s not there. I find it very odd to footnote something like this; it’s like sending someone off to find nothing. Later on we do find further reference to Fiona and Scourge meeting.

(Retcons! Remember, kids, retcons are only bad when DC and Marvel do them. If Ian Flynn does them, they're A-okay!)

  
From #150, we see here Tails catches him with Bunnie but he doesn’t mention Fiona at all, however its mentioned in #155 that he did witness it.  
  
Well I guess this could be explained as Tails saw it in #150 and didn’t make himself known unlike what he did with the Bunnie scene

(I dunno. Tails says "Not again" before he even notices that it's Fiona that Sonic is with. Ergo, he's referring to Bunnie.)

So this means it did happen right? Not so fast… that is until you see this footnote from #153
  

(Fiona Fox, depicted here as getting annoyed with Sonic for seemingly making a move on her while having full knowledge of Tails' feelings on the matter.)

In this scene Sonic is trying to tell Fiona about Tails and Fiona tells him he should have thought about that when he tried to make a move on her. Did you catch that? “*Evil-Sonic tried to make a move on Fiona.” If I told you I tried to do something that would mean I failed at my task. So basically this says Fiona rebuffed the romantic advance by the then Scourge (Anti-Sonic). It sounds like Tails must have left before seeing Fiona rebuff Anti-Sonic’s romantic advance.

So which footnote should we believe? 
***The correct answer should be #172 of course… after all the writers are trying to turn Fiona evil, remember?

(Again, it's a retcon.)

This brings us back to Sonic’s point in 172. Why no interest in Sonic until after 150-151? Well just maybe that repulsed kiss (I’m assuming it was a kiss as once again we don’t see anything in 150 and 151) spurred Fiona into thinking that she could become the real Sonic’s girlfriend. Is that really all that bad? Is it that so wrong of an idea?  After that statement you can see Fiona is left thinking, of course we have no idea what’s going through her head as it’s supposed to look like her betrayal has been found out by our blue hero.

Now let’s look at some the dark and witty statements Fiona made during #172 
  
Fiona’s statement says that she found attraction to Scourge in #150 and then she tried to find the same in Sonic. This is the opposite of what she said in #153 when Scourge tried to put the moves on her. I guess the writers just ignored #153

(Because if they didn't, then this story would collapse. Which it did anyway!)

 
I like this line from Fiona, basically it says Sonic is hung up on being a hero. I’m not arguing against it… he is. 

(Whoa, hold up. Look at that footnote. "Sally split with a slap in StH#132? Did they even read/edit this crap?)

  
This line I do find an issue with, why would she say this when she also said this below in #153?

(Again, fantastic footnote work here. Archie skillfully directs you to an issue where Fiona is a robot and Sonic never even learns of her existence. In fairness, the story was in an issue 28, but of the Knuckles comic.)

 
Once again the writers seem to have forgotten #153 and continue pushing Fiona to the dark side.
I don't know about you but the words in #153 seem a lot more genuine than #172

(Yeah, Fiona in 153 is talking like a person. Fiona in 172 is talking like a machine. The Ken Penders story has more natural-sounding dialogue.)

 
I like this line about the survival of the best (or fittest). However it’s a philosophical statement that she never ever hinted with all the fights she has been in with Sonic or in the comic series before for that matter. So to me this statement is coming out of the blue for the first time.

(Yeah, wasn't Fiona's role in the team all about helping people who were injured? Wasn't she willingly part of a team dedicated to helping the weak for at least two years of her life? Oh, and of course, here's another one of those moronic "Having the strength to temper yourself and not just slaughter everyone instead of letting them face justice is weak!" statements, always a good way to make your villain look like a total berk. There's a reason it's called holding back. They are containing their own rage and sense of righteous fury to do the right thing. Giving in and just killing people is weak, not the opposite. Also, yeah, Sonic is weak because he doesn't kill his enemies, but Scourge is strong when he doesn't even kick out the SUppression Squad after they've betrayed him countless times? I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Ian Flynn writes Fiona as if she is a total moron.)

When I first read these lines I thought “whoa” this girl is a bad ass. The problem is, when you look at in the context of the story line before #160 it doesn’t work, this sort of thinking doesn’t happen in a vacuum or overnight and should have manifested itself somewhere along the way in the story before we got to this point. But it’s obvious the writers were going for the “Duh, Duh, Duunnn!” moment with the whole Fiona betrayal thing so that’s why it was played out this way.

 Then we must not forget the big slap scene, this is the moment Fiona really goes to the dark side. 
     

 Poor Tails…
I wouldn’t want anyone to say I glossed over the “shock and awe” the writers put in with Fiona’s betrayal.

(Every time I look at these panels, they get dumber. She's using her right hand. Which is on his right cheek. And then suddenly, within a second, she's moved her hand around to the other side of his face and knocked him flying with a single backhand? Er, no. That's not how it works. She doesn't have super-strength. She's certainly not strong enough to launch him into the air, and make him twist his body like that. I'm so glad Yardley's art improved.)

Here’s a couple more mistakes in #172 (These are minor but they do point out the over all sloppy work)

Why does this say #167? It should be #165…   #167 is a “Mobius 25 years later” issue

(Tails shown here confiding this dark, important secret in Amy instead of Sally, Bunnie, or any of is other friends, all of whom he is closer to than Amy, so that Amy can be the one to get a leg-up on Fiona.How did we not notice this favouritism before the Mecha Sally arc made it overly blatant?)


This line by Amy is pretty much a “branding” statement, it clearly states what the writers want the readers to think of Fiona as. I find it sort of funny as we all know Amy doesn’t have a bias opinion on the matter… 
  FoxAffliction: Ahhh Amy…. Aren’t you the one wearing a hairband? Fiona wears a yellow bow”
Amy: “Hey the writers told me what to say, it’s not my fault!”
FoxAffliction: “I see, must be the same ones that forgot about #153”

That’s enough about #172 lets’ move on to few points I’d like to make to support the little twist I put on this story

       
These are from #161 where Scourge shows up and announces he was Evil Sonic, Anti-Sonic, and is now Scourge

A couple of interesting observations

    ·         I find it interesting that Fiona is one of the ones leading the charge, I guess maybe Fiona doesn’t recognize him even though Scourge says it himself he’s the Anti-Sonic. If Fiona really liked the Scourge why would she be one of the first to attack?

    ·         I also guess Fiona sees no problem that Scourge is with Rouge, the rival who beats her all the time. Wouldn’t you think this would make Fiona a little bit upset if she really did like Scourge? I mean Rouge has been running with Scourge (then Anti-Sonic) since #151 and Fiona does or doesn’t know about this? The whole time line with Scourge and Fiona is just so sketchy.

    

These are from #165, so we get the feeling Fiona and Scourge have met up at some point recently. But you can see Fiona isn’t exactly winking at Scourge, in fact she looks more annoyed really and then she tells Sonic that what Scourge said was a lie. After this issue Fiona goes missing until #172

So here’s where I decided to be creative and switch this around a little and tell it from Fiona’s view. I’m not trying to make Fiona look completely innocent, she is still guilty of slapping Tails and defecting with Scourge as the story goes.

Here is the narrative:

    1-      Fiona rebuffs Scourge’s (then Anti-Sonic) romantic advances in #150-151 as #153 said so

    2-      Fiona then starts thinking about Sonic in a boyfriend/girlfriend sort of way after that but with the real Sonic. We don’t know who initiates the relationship, but with the way Sonic is I’m sure flirtation turned into something greater, after all Sonic is trying to get over the break up with Sally that happened in #134

    3-      #155 - Fiona makes out with the real Sonic in the bushes. This is a kid’s comic so let’s just say it’s kissing. Tails catches them and then Sonic feels all weird about the romance

   4-      Sonic decides to slow the relationship down as evident in #158 (below)
    
    5-      Fiona agrees to this but in her mind this sends up a red flag that the relationship went backwards. From this point on all we see is Sonic and Fiona holding hands and talking. No more making out.

*** I don’t know about you but if I went from making out with someone to just holding hands and talking… well I would be getting upset too. I’d want to know why but if I really like the other person… well I would be reluctant to bring it up in case it would cause a breakup. So the feeling of doubt about the relationship would slowly build up.

    6-      Issue #160 happens and Scourge is born and Fiona starts getting questions about her past. These questions along with her doubt about the relationship cause her to seek time alone to think.

    7-     Issue #161 happens and Fiona helps to lead the charge as the comic shows above. Fiona barely knows Anti-Sonic (remember she rebuffed Anti-Sonic back in #150) This Scourge guy looks like bad news so she battles him and Rouge. Scourge runs away with Rouge and escapes with the help of Finitevus.

    8-      Scourge comes back later on, but it’s when Fiona is alone and in a non-threating manner. It’s not instinctive for boys and girls to fight, it’s more instinctive for them to ask questions and Fiona questions him. Scourge is a lot more polished in his approach to Fiona than he was as Anti-Sonic, he’s talks about himself and how he’s changed. Like Sonic he’s a smooth talker when he wants to be and even tells Fiona that he secretly hates Rouge and wants to dump her. Secretly, Scourge wants to hurt Sonic so what better way than try to steal his girlfriend. He knows it won’t be an easy task so he takes it slow. Fiona knows she shouldn’t trust him and keeps her distance. At this point in time people are questioning Fiona’s past so she feels she shouldn’t report him because someone might just think it a bit odd. She rationalizes that it’s just a onetime encounter after all and no one needs to know.

    9-      Scourge stalks Fiona again and this time with Sleuth dog secretly in the background. Scourge brings Sleuth along and lies to him, telling Sleuth he’s seeing Sonic’s girlfriend behind Sonic’s back. Fiona gets annoyed with Scourge’s presence again but once again doesn’t report him because now she’s seen him twice and there would be even more questions. Scourge once again uses the topic of Rouge and tells Fiona about made up stories of stupid stuff she has done and Fiona listens because who wouldn’t want to hear gossip about your rival. But she still doesn’t trust him and in the end and she leaves. Sleuth, who doesn’t hear the actual conversation, sees this discussion as proof Fiona is cheating on Sonic with Scourge (especially since Scourge gets a small visual laugh/smile out of Fiona about the Rouge gossip). After all, Sleuth wants to believe this to be true because he wants to hurt Sonic too.

    10-      Issue 165 happens and now Fiona is blackmailed into an agreement with Sleuth Dog as she is caught off guard as to how Sleuth knows about her meeting with Scourge and can’t explain it. Sonic gives her the look of distrust. Tails doesn’t say anything because he’s unsure himself.
From #165 (Where Sleuth Dog calls Fiona a traitor)

    11-   Fiona seeks time alone again and spirals deeper into depression because of the distrust from Sonic. Scourge shows up again but this time he tells her about how Sonic saved the princess (#156). Scourge asks Fiona if Sonic would save her the same way, this re-ignites Fiona’s thoughts about abandonment by Sonic. Fiona, like a lot of girls, wants the fairy tale ending with the hero. She feels her fairy tale ending slipping away and feels its Sonic’s fault for because they never kiss anymore. Scourge says things like, “The dude is more into being a hero than into you. Can’t you see it?”  Scourge tells Fiona how special she is and that if they were a couple they would go super*, Fiona thinks the idea is crazy but the idea of changing oneself is appealing as her current situation is spiraling with the distrust in the already stalled relationship and her past coming back to haunt her. She tries to keep her feelings in and just avoids Sonic.

    12-   Issue 172 - Fiona runs into Amy, who has always looked at her relationship with Sonic with envious eyes. Amy accuses her of infidelity and it annoys Fiona that this brat is about to make her accidental secret public. Can you imagine the humiliation that you were found out by Sonic’s wannabe girlfriend? So she toys with Amy.

Then Sonic himself comes in and starts to grill her on trust and their relationship. She gets mad as the whole thing about her past and their relationship is falling apart and crashing around her. Then Scourge shows up and Fiona knows she’s just screwed. She does what a lot of people do during a break up, they go nuclear without any thought to what the aftermath will be of what they do. She does whatever she can to hurt the one she sees now as causing the relationship to fail and that someone is Sonic. In the end Fiona runs away with Scourge and finds out he is working for Finitevus. She stays with them because she knows she’s now a traitor and secretly wonders if there is a way she could change like Scourge… change by going super.* I felt that would at least be something for personal motivation as the writers gave her nothing, nothing but “she likes bad boys”. That’s a horrible motivation and basically says she is stupid. While I might be persuaded to think Fiona could be fooled for a little while her relationship with Scourge would never last.

*(This is a big part of Fiona's story in FoxAffliction's series, and it plays out rather well. It's not a part of the comics, however.

 

While this isn’t the greatest story it at least attempts to explain Fiona’s betrayal in a more mutual failure on both Sonic and Fiona’s part, not to mention Scourge’s involvement. Please don't take what I'm doing here as defending the betrayal story at all. I'm just trying to work within it to continue it on how I see it would play out. I understand the writers wanted to bring Sally back to Sonic’s side and give Scourge a girl but did they have to do it this way? They could have just easily broke Sonic and Fiona up and Sally moves back in. And as for Scourge's girl, why not invent one? Is it really that hard? FionaXScourge really makes no sense, the guy is such a douchebag that people refer to him that way constantly. 

 

We know Sonic doesn’t really love Fiona like Sally

  
(from #171) That’s not something you say about someone you really care about and basically foreshadows the big fight Sonic has with Tails about Fiona in #179

 
(from #179) I know a lot of people really didn’t like these issues and rightly so. It’s a very bad look for Sonic. So Sonic confesses and is exonerated because after all he is the hero.

(While I do think FoxAffliction's theory is pretty tight, it's not flawless, for these reasons: 

 160-1 has Sally becoming suspicious of Fiona when she learns about her history with Bark and Bean. Except... wouldn't Sally run background checks on her new recruits? I know Fiona joined when Sally was in her depression, but surely someone would need Fiona to specify her history before they let her into the team. Otherwise any old Eggman agent could just say "Hey, I wanna be a Freedom Fighter", walk up to Sally, and stab her. I know that's not Eggman's style, but other villains would do it, and he might, say, stab her with mind control drugs or something, which would be Eggman's style. The whole scene that Flynn uses to spark a conflict between Sally and Fiona is a plothole, because Fiona could never get into the Freedom Fighters without telling Sally, or someone screening for Sally who would also report back to her, about her history!

 There's still no reason why Fiona wouldn't say "Hey, Evil Sonic made a move on me. I almost fell for it, but then I realised who he was. You know I hate being lied to, so he was out on his tail pretty quickly" the first time, and there's also no reason why she wouldn't say "GUys, Scourge showed up and tried to seduce me", at least to Sonic, who, as far as she knows, still trusts her, even if he's not feeling a spark in their relationship. After all, he defended her from Sally's plothole-rage, and Fiona would probably understand Sonic being more cautious in relationships after 134.

 Fiona had a virulent hatred of the villains. She was eager to oppose any and all evils they encountered. And yet she falls for a card-carrying villain? Er, no.

 The explanation does not cater for the things Fiona said in issue 153. Even with FoxAffliction's revamping of the story to make it not as dumb, the events of issue 172 still contradict the previous issue. We're given no reason why Fiona suddenly has a grudge again, other than needing it to justify her sudden shift in philosophy. Contrary to my sarcasm above, retcons like this are bad, no matter who does it. I've seen people hating retcons and saying that they're terrible, yet still supporting this issue. No. Just because Flynn wrote this issue, and Penders wrote 153. Ken Penders might be a dick, he might be a bad writer, and he might be a few screws short of a toolbox, but his stories are just as important to the Mobius Prime-era comics as Ian Flynn's were, and his stories are no less valid. If you have to completely ignore 153 to make 172 work, then 172 does not work.)

Oh man this journal is ridiculously long...

I’m not Anti-Archie, for the most part the comic is good, I just think they did a real bad job with Fiona only because the writers put so little effort into her turning to the dark side. At least Geoffrey St. John got a backstory of a trial for his betrayal. I really hope the writers didn’t do this because she’s a girl, I know it’s a boy oriented comic but it has a huge female following.

For the record I don’t hate Scourge, I just don’t see Fiona running away with him. Of course if you make a comic where Fiona turns all evil like the writers did well I guess I can’t argue with anyone who says they can see it happening that way or they may even like the comic. Everyone is entitled to their opinion about it. Once again, if you like FionaXScourge that’s fine with me, it’s a big universe with plenty of room for all of us.

I also must confess a part of me does like the bad ass mentally Fiona has gained. However the flip flop was executed so badly once you peeled back the first layer and actually started looking where the footnotes led you. If you are going to brutalize a longtime character like this at least put more effort into it. It’s like the writers didn’t think she was worth it and if the writers don’t think a character is worth it why should we think any of their other characters are worth it? Does Fiona make a good villain? Of course she does, but it’s how they did it and who it was with that just really is a misjustice. Then the arc ended and nothing else happened. I got a gut feeling Fiona, Scourge, and the rest of the gang were shelved after SU#32 with or without Pender’s lawsuit. I think Archie was told to bury this group and not use them again for some reason (I heard it’s because of Metal-Sonic coming back). I found it sad that Fiona will spend the rest of eternity buried with Scourge with no resolution.

So in conclusion anyone coming across this DA account in some future time and wonders what was the madness behind these stories. This is basically it: I thought the writers did a horrible disservice to a character who started life with some major issues happening to her and then makes it all the way to become something special. Then she just throws it all away for a bad boy for no rhyme or reason? I guess I just had to fulfill that reason and give it a better ending.

So if I haven’t lost you already with this long winded journal, please enjoy the stories I wrote if wish to read them.


OKay, and now we're back to me.

Ergh.

It's official. Issue 172 is, without a doubt, the most poorly-written, poorly-edited, and poorly-set-up story in the history of the comic. And I know Flynn has said that he doesn't much care for it anymore, and all I can say to that is "Good". If I'd written something as bad as this (And I've written some fairly crap stories in my time), I would not just be ashamed of it. I would not just cancel any and all sequels to it. I would delete the story, and post a journal apologizing for putting the readership through that.

Whether Fiona is a good character or not has been a point of contention here at for a long time. I would say that it became an issue when , and started commenting on my old, crappy rants. SOme people have said that she's a better character after she turned evil. But she's not. Because any character whose biggest contribution to the series is "Being another character's love interest" is not a strong character. My current stance is that her pre-172 self had a lot of potential to be interesting, which was never utilized, and I can't in good faith consider her a bad character because of that. Post-172, on the other hand, is a terrible character. The only development she got was washing away her previous development, and the only way to develop her further than where she ended up was to undo what Flynn did. We knew nothing about her motives, nothing about what she wanted, and really, nothing about her. All she was was another reason for Scourge to be a smug asshole about everything. Oh sure, she filled slots in the Destructix and SUppression Squad... slots that were only open because Flynn booted off the previous characters to make room for her.

I... I just don't want to argue about that issue. I'll let you say your pieces on it, but I'm not responding to any rebuttals in my usual text walls anymore. It'll just be a waste of your time, since nothing anyone can say is going to convince me that this was a good move.

Thanks go to for writing this interesting piece.