u/Extreme-Fee-9519

Meaning in this hypothetical AU timeline, Eggman Nega is Sonic’s nemesis and Eggman is Blaze’s nemesis. So Blaze gets the loud and theatrical one who wants to build a theme park and have everyone worship him while Sonic gets the calm and polite one who wants to cause destruction and suffering out of sadism.

Side Note: This is also can be another way to showcase the mirror between dynamics since Sonic’s Chaos contrasts Eggman’s Order while Blaze’s Order contrasts Eggman Nega’s Chaos.

Ironically enough Eggman would allign Blaze more since both want Order in their own way and Eggman Nega aligns with Sonic more since both want Chaos in their own way.

Sonic would likely break psychologically because banters and insults would have zero effects on Eggman Nega because he’s always creepily calm and desires nothing but chaos and destruction because he’s a sick bastard who likes to watch people suffer.

Blaze would probably be better mentally because Eggman actually wants the world alive to take over it because he wants an Empire, his theme park, and people to admire him and his genius.

(I’d draw these characters but I’m not an artist lol. You can if you want, you have my permission)

Me:

Cause sometimes he’ll call himself an Evil Genius like in Sonic Battle or call his schemes Evil like in Colors.

But then there’s other times like in the Metal Virus Arc, his arguably most evil act in Canon, where he doesn’t see what he’s doing is bad, as shown in the image above. He even says in Chaotix Casefiles that he wanted people benefit from his genius.

Now we know Eggman in past was emotionally neglected as a child because his family was grieving Maria, so his ego and attention seeking behavior could possibly be a coping mechanism.

Tails in ironically enough Unleashed brings up to Chip that he was sure Eggman was feeding Professor Pickle despite kidnapping him because “Even he’s not that cruel.”

It’s also worth noting that Eggman was never conceptualized as some pure evil sadist like how he was in a lot of early Western media, he was conceptualized as a symbol of humanity’s selfishness and greed but the kinds of bad people Eggman was based on didn’t harm the environment simply because they felt like it, they did it because to them, in their own heads, felt that it was necessary in order to achieve whatever they were trying to build or earn, they never saw themselves as the bad guys.

So if were to take that Eggman doesn’t see himself as the villain of his story, the best answer we could assume as to why he calls himself an Evil Genius and his schemes evil sometimes is simply that he doesn’t take it literally, it’s just theatrics to him since we know Eggman is a showman at heart. It’s probably no different than Dr. Doofenshimirtz calling himself an Evil Genius since he really treats it as just a theatrical title.

What do you all think?

It’s not like Eggman is going to become a more sympathetic character because of it. He’s still a Egomaniacal Tyrant, just with some small glimpses of humanity. Being a bad person is different from being a bad or uncaring parent.

I know it’s a little cliché to give a villain a daughter to make them more third dimensional, but I don’t give a damn, Eggman and Sage are cute, and now The Doctor actually has more of a reason to conquer the world other than for himself.

I really made this post because I’ve seen some people think making Eggman a dad would make him more sympathetic and thus damage his character.

Before I get torched, right off the bat, I just want to say that this is not, and I repeat, NOT a bashing post about Ian Flynn. I have nothing against him as a person, and I think he's a fine writer overall. I'll always give him credit for some of his stories and his contributions to the franchise's lore; however, that does not mean I am obligated to agree with everything he says, and this is one of them. I'm just a guy who wants to share my opinion and defend a character I like. Ironically enough, I actually used to agree with Ian's opinion on Eggman Nega back then, but then I saw a certain popular chart and decided to start looking deeper into Eggman Nega's character and I ended up changing my mind on him, and now I genuinely find him underrated and interesting, and I'm going to discuss why right now.

For context, we need to look into what Ian actually said about Eggman Nega first in his BumbleKast interview:

"I don't like his design I think he's wholly derivative. He looks like Eggman, he has the same ambitions as Eggman, he has virtually the same characterization as Eggman."

Now these are all the major aspects Ian said about the character and now I'm going to go into every specific part and summarize my thoughts on each:

"I don't like his design I think he's wholly derivative. He looks like Eggman."

This is probably going to be the most subjective part of this whole discussion, so whether you like his design or not comes down to personal taste, but I think intentions matter. For starters, I get where he's coming from; it does look like just another Eggman with a weirder design at first, but that was the point of his design. Eggman Nega is, well, it's in his title...a Nega character, just like Negaduck, Nega-Chin, Nega-Scott. Who are characters meant to represent a different kind of mirror for a character in a certain way (I'll get into what kind of mirror Eggman Nega is to Eggman in the third part). He was meant to be seen as a "Don't Judge a Book By Its Cover" angle where, while he may look like another Eggman on the outside, on the inside he is anything but. I go more into his design in this post here, so I'll link it so I don't have to repeat myself and keep the ball rolling:( https://www.reddit.com/r/SonicTheHedgehog/comments/1vay7ib/opinion_eggman_negas_design_is_fine/ )

"He has the same ambitions as Eggman"

No, he does not. That is just straight-up misinformation. In all four times when Eggman Nega was the main antagonist of a story, his goals were always to end the world/multiverse, not rule it.

- Rush: He manipulates Eggman into stealing the Sol Emeralds for him, with a fake promise to create an Eggmanland beyond any dimension, when really Eggman Nega was lying to him, and he actually plans to collapse both the Sol and Chaos Dimensions into nothingness. Even casually says to Blaze, "I couldn't care less what happens to our world."

- Rush Adventure: He manipulates Eggman a second time into working with him, this time to steal the Jeweled Scepter so they could obtain the Power of the Stars, but Eggman didn't know Eggman Nega was planning to use it to wipe out the multiverse. They created a bunch of robot pirates to go retrieve it and also make Blaze and Sonic think that they weren't behind this until they revealed themselves at the end, and during the final battle Eggman Nega fired the Planet Buster Laser to Eggman's horror, even calling Eggman Nega "Mad," and if it weren't for Marine's interference, the Sol Dimension would've been destroyed and thus the Chaos Dimension aswell due to the Power of the Stars link:

- Rivals: He plans to destroy the future by turning the world and its people into cards with a Futuristic Magic Camera he stole, and I'd argue being turned into a Card is worse than a Zombot because you're actually still conscious when you're stuck as a 2D Inanimate Card, which is borderline IHNMAIMS territory.

- Rivals 2: He plans to awaken and unleash the Ifrit onto the world, a giant demon bird that destroys dimensions, drives people insane, and binds souls according to what Gerald's notebook said about it. He also kidnapped hordes of Chao, the most innocent creatures in Sonic lore, as livestock to power up the Ifrit, and it's later confirmed that Eggman Nega didn't even need the Chao because the Ifrit was already powerful enough; he just did it because he's a sick bastard and likes to watch innocents suffer.

"He has virtually the same characterization as Eggman."

I could bring up DueLion's chart comparing both Eggmen and call this part a day (This is it if you haven't seen it: https://www.reddit.com/r/SonicTheHedgehog/comments/19ep3jk/the_parallels_between_eggman_and_eggman_nega_an/ ), but I would like to finally bring up the mirror point. So we all know Nega characters are meant to be the mirror to their Posi counterparts in a certain way, so what is Eggman Nega's mirror to Eggman supposed to be? Well, it's not that he's more evil than Eggman (Even if he technically is), but rather that his evil is a different type of evil. Eggman is Loud but Orderly while Eggman Nega is Calm but Chaotic.

Eggman is a theatrical and boisterous tyrant who wants to achieve world domination, build his own Amusement Park, and have the world benefit from and recognize him for his genius because he never got that as a kid.

Eggman Nega, on the other hand, is like if you gave a calm, polite gentleman who is, at the same time, a clinical psychopath who wants to watch the world burn, Eggman's level of intelligence and capabilities.

That is what makes Eggman Nega unique in my opinion compared to Eggman because destroying the world while acting polite and indifferent would be extremely out of character for Eggman, so his counterpart is all the things he would never do. He’s more like Dark Knight Joker, Anton Chigurh, or even Cyrus from Pokemon. Eggman Nega should be treated by the narrative as a 100 Percent serious villain with zero hints of goofiness or jokes. Make him this cold, calculating Villain who prefers to be mostly behind the scenes. Show us that while he still acts more like a serious BTS General, he still decides to always choose the most fun options to him (That being the most sadistic), which would be the opposite of Eggman’s hammy presence and plans but he always chooses the most efficient option (To him) instead of the most cruel one.

That's basically every major thing I wanted to talk about here. As I said at the top, this was not a bashing post about Ian Flynn, it was just me throwing my two cents in a specific topic I disagreed with. To cap things off, I'd like to leave this popular Blaze Fan Comic Series that I've been reading; its first chapter finally finished all pages, and I can't help but say I'm hooked on where this story is going so far and it's great seeing this villain I find underrated being utilized to his fullest potential: https://www.deviantart.com/labluarts/art/Blaze-the-cat-Embers-of-Hope-CH-1-cover-1225403042

That's all I have for this post, so thank you for reading, and peace.

In my opinion, I love the depth and character development Dr. Eggman was given in Frontiers. It’s definitely given us a whole new perspective on his worldviews and why he is the way he is like his ego and world domination goals being a projection of his insecurities and desperation for attention because he never got that when he was a child due to living in the shadow of his late cousin.

I find his father-daughter relationship with Sage adorable and I hope we get to see Eggman continue going down the route of while still being a tyrant, he does genuinely care about his AI daughter and wants the best for her.

Now I’m not saying Eggman should stop being evil, I just prefer him having more redeeming qualities and softer sides because it makes him far more depth and fits his canon characterization better.

Now I don’t mean straight up out of character just I feel like that some aspects of this arc maybe have pushed the evilness of Eggman a bit too far. I don’t know what good infecting the whole world into metal would do for Eggman’s goals, he is a character who still needs people alive so they can be forced to worship his genius, but you can’t really do that if everyone is mindless metal zombies going “Urrr! Urrr!” all the time, he would probably get bored super quick and possibly even regret doing this plan to begin with. I like to headcannon that the reason Eggman unleashed this metal plague was because his mental health was at an all time low due to spending (I think) months as an amnesiac kind toy maker and repair guy after losing a war that he was winning for six months, arguably the closest he’s gone to winning since Unleashed. It makes sense how evil Eggman was this time since this arc was planned for Archie, and we all know that version of Eggman actually is sadistically evil, but that doesn’t work for Canon Eggman, he’s a means to an end kind of villain whose blinded by his narcissism and delusions of grandeur. He only chooses the crueler option if it’s more productive and easy. In Unleashed he cracked open the planet yes, but it was still because he needed to awaken Dark Gaia so he can build EggmanLand, cracking open the planet was just the cost, two things that should also be mentioned is that npcs in the game treated the situation as an annoyance for the most part, and also no one died when the planet cracked open since this is a supernatural event that happens even 10,000 years according to the lore, Eggman just woke up Dark Gaia early.

Now there are two things that do help his character’s case like the moment he looked down at the Zombots with brief regret when remembering his time as Mr. Tinker, and ultimately being the one who came up with the solution that got rid of the virus in the first place, that’s something a lot of people forget to mention.

This is all just my personal opinion and I’m curious to see how others might feel.

I haven’t played this game in a long time but I did genuinely think the core gameplay was fun, but some of the gacha stuff did make me feel disinterested in returning to it.

Commander Tower or Commander Walters

I know Eurobeat Brony’s (And Living Tombstone’s remix) is super iconic and really good but I think some of the other fan songs deserve some credit.

Neverending Strife and Spirit of Chaos are my favorites.

Edit: Chute I forgot to include Entropy in the pictures aswell 😭

In fact I‘d argue it actually is a straight up solid character design that nails the vibe of an alternate Eggman that looks weird and off in a good way.

Both Eggmen to me give off a different vibe with their appearances. Eggman looks more blocky and heavy while Eggman Nega looks more sharp and sleek.

I don’t really buy the pallet swap argument a lot of people make with Eggman Nega’s design because unlike alot of other Nega characters (NegaDuck, Nega-Chin, Nega Shantae, Nega Teen Titans, Etc), Eggman Nega has a different style rather than just inverted colors.

- His glasses are pointed instead of circular like Eggman’s.

- Eggman Nega’s single lens visor goggles are different from Eggman’s separate two circular goggles.

- Eggman Nega’s wrist cuffs are sharper and more triangular unlike Eggman’s more cubic wrist cuffs

- Eggman Nega’s jacket is different from Eggman’s as it looks like something you would put on like a a regular jacket rather than Eggman’s which looks like you have to put it over your head to put it on.

- Eggman Nega’s tailcoats are longer and are split apart rather than Eggman’s tailcoats being shorter and between his legs.

- Eggman Nega’s clothes also ditch a lot of the blocky aesthetic that Eggman goes for as with things like having two triangular patterns that replace where the Gold block buttons would be, there’s just a single yellow stripe on each side of the coat rather than a vertical grey tetris block pattern that Eggman has on his shoulders and the middle of his chest.

- Eggman Nega also wears yellow striped shoes rather than Eggman’s Leggings with the same, grey vertical tetris looking blocks style that’s already on his shoulders.

- Both Eggmen have that big gray button on their jackets, but Eggman’s is lower because the front his jacket has a triangular that goes down while Eggman Nega’s front of his jacket doesn’t have that.

- Last point I want to make is that Eggman Nega’s red bodysuit actually has a pattern on it with a single white line that goes all the way down. Eggman also kinda has it but it’s the gray blocky tetris one and it stops quickly because top part of his jacket is short. If Eggman took off his jacket it would just be a plain black bodysuit, while if Eggman Nega took off his jacket it would be a red bodysuit with one white line that goes down the middle.

Objectively speaking, Eggman Nega is not a pallet swap or recolor. Another way to show this is by the third image, I switched the settings of the second picture to monochrome so all the colors were removed and I can still tell them apart.

I also think things like the visor goggles, sharper wrist cuffs, and longer split apart tailcoats also kill the “Same Silhouette“ argument since like I said before all of those look different from Eggman’s.

I know some people still would wish Blaze had a more standalone looking villain than another Eggman, but I’m glad the creators went out of their way to make Eggman Nega distinct looking instead of doing something lazy like just changing Eggman’s design to monochrome and maybe giving him red glasses like a stereotypical Nega-Character design.

I think this is the chance to genuinely bring back the Original face of MLP Villains. He could potentially function as the recurring Tyrant Villain of the show in the same way characters like Doctor Eggman or Megatron are. I wouldn’t think about putting too many villains in the show so having Grogar as the sole foil to the Ponies, Equestria, and concept of Friendship would be a good choice if you ask me.

He would be your Pure Evil Tyrant who selfishly wants to take over the world and destroy what the heroes care about, just like in Gen 1. It would be a win for all sides, people who want Grogar back and newcomers for having a fun and easy to follow villain.

To me, that’s a scary concept that I wish was utilized more in canon. He would likely make for a good Multiversal Stakes Arc in possible stories.

The thing that makes him unique to me isn’t that he’s more evil than Eggman, but rather that his kind of evil and character is different.

Chaotix Casefiles bringing him back sparked my interest for him and now he seems like a very fun character to write.

Think they should continue leaning into him being someone who wants to be seen as powerful and terrifying but is really just a pathetic, insecure guy with a God Complex.

Idk I just think the most recent Sonic Stories (Chaotix Casefiles isn’t one of them I actually really liked it, and I loved that they brought back Infinite and improved his character) have been held back by Sega’s really strict mandates. It feels like Sega is too afraid to take creative risks most of the time nowadays. The IDW comics are an example for me since while them being canon was cool at first, now it feels like they are why the recent stories have been stale. Since they’re canon that means there can’t be any dramatic changes like in characters or world building. You know the plot will be resolved with zero lasting consequences and you know the characters won’t have any development so what’s the point in reading them?

And some characters are outright just flanderized like how Shadow was, I was baffled by his 35th Anniversary bio saying that he likes nothing when that’s objectively not true at all, what does Rouge, Omega, Maria, Gerald, and even coffee beans mean to this Hedgehog then?

You know say what you will about Archie but at least they weren’t boring and there was lasting impacts in the ongoing narratives. I’d rather read a story that actually makes me feel something even if its something that pisses me off writing wise over stories that make me feel nothing, boring is always the worst thing a piece of media can be. Hell the most popular and best arc in IDW was originally intended for Archie.

I hope at some point Sega’s mandates will continue loosening up so we can have more unique stories and bring back some characters that I think have potential. Hoping for the best even if I think that’s unlikely.

Feels like a missed opportunity in storytelling.

We could have a spinoff with a darker thriller-like tone where the trio do missions like how they did in the Archie Comics.

G.U.N is slowly coming back now thankfully so it’s definitely possible that we could see it happening in the future again.

I think Shadow being a GUN agent isn‘t a bad thing since his goal is protecting the planet, and GUN is very different now than it was 50 years ago, and the current leader of the organization has the same kind of traumatic losses as Shadow, so it’s not like they don’t understand each other.

Maria definitely would’ve Shadow and Tower to work together in the reformed G.U.N to help protect the Planet.

As a lot know, Blaze is Sonic’s Sol counterpart, where she might look super different at glance with her appearance, personality, and interests but despite all that they still work off of each other very well. Sonic’s a very open person so it makes the sense that the multiverse would give him someone so different yet so similar at the same time.

Eggman on the other hand is a very shallow individual, we all know he cares only about himself and his image so it makes sense the multiverse would have his counterpart someone that happens to look like him, but what Eggman failed to account for is that while Eggman Nega might look like just another version of him with a different styled appearance, but on the inside, Eggman Nega is nothing like him. Eggman Nega is calmer, polite, indifferent, and doesn’t want to rule the world, but rather destroy it, which is stuff that would be extremely out of character for Eggman.

The parallels continue in a way where Blaze treats Sonic as an obstacle that gets in her way but eventually learns that he is a good friend and a good teammate to help her save the world while Eggman Nega pretends to treat Eggman as an equal and Eggman’s ego lets him be easily manipulated him into an alliance because of Nega’s fake promise to build a Multiversal EggmanLand and thinking since Nega looks like him, he must have the same goals as him, when really Eggman Nega really plans to destroy the Multiverse and take Eggman down with him. He only treats Eggman as a tool to discard later once he’s lived out his use.

Sonic and Blaze might look different on the outside, but on the inside, they have the same goal of protecting their worlds and friends.

Eggman and Eggman Nega might look similar on the outside, but on the inside, they have fundamentally different goals about what they want to do to their worlds that clash severely.

This is why Eggman Nega is the perfect dimensional counterpart for Eggman.