When I initially started the polls, I was hoping for it to be a glorious and fun time to interact with my audience a bit more because I'm the man who speaks for the people. I'm kind of like The Lorax, only instead of trying to save the trees, I'm trying to stop people from jerking off to Sonic. Huh. Well, anyways, I unintentionally ran into a huge problem with the polls: ties. So, yeah...I should have thought of this earlier. So, basically, the polls are now going to be two choices at a time. So, I am going to do an episode on fan characters, which (to me) surprisingly had no votes. From now on, however, it will be audience voted until an exception comes along or something!
It's no lie: Sonic fan characters get a bad reputation on the internet. The common critique is unoriginality. Whether that be by personality, traits or looks varies depending on who you talk to. Another common critique is self-insertion. Fan characters can basically be the author trying to make the perfect recreation of himself, whether that be to either hang out with Sonic characters or to have sex with them, and I'll have you be the judge on which one I hate more. (Hint: Look at my past episodes) The final criticism is the overpowered fan character, or, as I like to call it, "the Coldsteel the Hedgeheg Trope." This is when a fan character is overpowered and tries to hard to be "cool."
All of these criticisms are fine criticisms, if not a little bias. What I mean is that there are people that think that every fan character is an "Ow the Edgeheg," who is basically "lik sanic but a difrent shade of blu and can turn in2 hyper xtreem ow the edgeheg buy using the mastor emorald khaos emoralds and the sole emoralds and fusing with sanic shaduw knuckls and silveer and has sex w/ rogue and blaze420." The thing is that not all fan characters are like this. There are some really well made and genuinely decent fan characters out there.
Don't get me wrong however. There are the Edgehegs, and they are certainly prominent. In fact, I wouldn't blame you if you WERE mistaken to believe that all fan characters are Edgehegs. So, how does one not write an Edgeheg? Well, it's simple: don't write yourself as an overly powered super hedgehog. Write your fan character as an actual character. Instead of focusing on his powers, his relationships (both sexual and nonsexual), and his species, try to focus on his personality. Is he likeable? Is he understandable? If yes, then congratulations! You wrote an actual fan character!
It's just a shame so many authors tend to forget this, and either make a perfect self-insert, an overpowered Edgeheg, a man with the inability to get STD's, or all of the above. These need to stop. The fan character community is already drowning in its own semen at this point, and it won't get any better if teenagers keep masturbating to furry versions of who they wish they could be.
Apologies once again if nobody wanted this episode to happen. I just really needed a tiebreaker, and I don't have a hat or paper. I'm MysteriousManPerson, and don't forget to review and flame!
