My problems with Shadow, in concept and execution

[Iko]

I think that one off characters should not come back unless the writers find a good reason to bring them back.

This is why I want the Sonic games to have a story mode and a separated arcade mode where you can play as several other characters without messing with canon. This way, you can play as a dead character in a game where he/she wouldn't make sense.

E102 Gamma is dead, the flicky inside him escaped, there's literally no way to recreate him. I liked E102 Gamma but I don't want them to bring him back, his story has a well made ending and capturing the bird again only to recreate the character and have him around every game just feels wrong. But I wouldn't mind if E102 Gamma returned in the form of a not-canon playable character in the arcade mode of a game. They can still use him for marketing, write what-if spinoffs featuring him, and other stuff, without ruining his original story.

In case of Shadow, I think that he should have not returned canon-wse. If they really wanted to bring him back, then he should have returned several games later, with an explanation of why he's been away all this time, and a new plot revolving around him. What they have done is just bringing him back the next game and forget about what happend in SA2, they even changed his backstory adding aliens and other unnecessary stuff, and basically retconned his death with a weak explanation.

I also like Blaze but I prefer her to not be around unless there's a reason to have her around, too; this doesn't mean that she can't be in sport and party spin-offs or storybook games, or have merchandise and promotion material, or be playable as a not-canon bonus. Silver is the same thing.

9 hours ago, Bowbowis said:

As for needing to justify Shadow's appearances going forward, he has much more leeway than Silver, Blaze, or Knuckles. In fact, given the whole GUN agent angle, Shadow's personal reasons to protect the world, and Omega's vendetta it's actually harder to justify Team Dark not appearing whenever Eggman is stirring shit up.

I see this as another problem honestly. When you have a character that's a second hero like the main character, it's a problem when he/she should be around but you (writer) don't want him/her to be around because he/she doesn't fit the mood or the gameplay of the game.

The Kirby series also has this problem with Metaknight, people occasionally complain about why Metaknight is not in a game and there is no explanation for that (mostly the Dark Matter trilogy, but it also happend with Rainbow Curse, Nintendo even released a gag comic to explain that).

[batson]

19 hours ago, Kuzu said:

Yes Shadow is likely the harbinger of the droves of fan-characters created at the time. But so what? Why is this considered a bad thing unless you just hate those types of characters in general? Because let's be real here, the the entire series was literally built on this concept. Sonic himself was literally designed as "cooler and edgier" than Mario.And you bought into it just like every other kid did back then as well. It was "different" back then, just like it was "different" in 2001. The reasons both Sonic & Shadow took off so well with audiences in their respective time periods is because Sega understood how to write these characters for people to buy into them, and why Infinite fell flat because he was hilariously undercooked by comparison.

 

Two things;

First of all, I never said that a reason to dislike Shadow is because he brought about droves of similar fan-characters. What I'm saying is that some people make hypocrites of themselves by deriding such fan-characters while at the same time being okay with Shadow. Because like I said, Shadow is indistinguishable from such fan-characters. Every element that we find in edgy, overpowered and unoriginal fan-characters is also found in Shadow.

Secondly, Shadow was made fun of by adult gamers from day one. It's not really comparable to how Sonic and his 90's tude was taken at face value by pretty much everyone in 1991. Shadow was considered over the top edgy even back in the 00's, which is why his own game was mocked to hell and back as soon as the first trailer came out, both by professional game critics and by the older parts of the Sonic fanbase. Trust me, I was there.

[Shadowlax]

2 hours ago, batson said:

Two things;

First of all, I never said that a reason to dislike Shadow is because he brought about droves of similar fan-characters. What I'm saying is that some people make hypocrites of themselves by deriding such fan-characters while at the same time being okay with Shadow. Because like I said, Shadow is indistinguishable from such fan-characters. Every element that we find in edgy, overpowered and unoriginal fan-characters is also found in Shadow.

If you dont understand execution can allow people to enjoy premises simular to other premises. Like I dont know if anyone can have a discussion.

"You like sonic but dont like Busby or cool spot? Hypocrite. "

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Secondly, Shadow was made fun of by adult gamers from day one. It's not really comparable to how Sonic and his 90's tude was taken at face value by pretty much everyone in 1991. Shadow was considered over the top edgy even back in the 00's, which is why his own game was mocked to hell and back as soon as the first trailer came out, both by professional game critics and by the older parts of the Sonic fanbase. Trust me, I was there.

This kinda hella anecdotal considering homie remains incredibly popular. It's also kinda irrelevant especially considering the state sonic is in now.

Appealing to those people has brought us to a place where the games are uninteresting as hell. And a lot of people didnt like or didnt engage with 3d sonic in general. And just started engaging again because 2d sonic is an option. Resulting in years of dwindling sales numbers trying to appeal to a group of adults who can't get over their in somecases, honestly manchild bullshit. That isnt a point against shadow. It speaks volumes of Sega's inability to understand their audience. And their weird acceptance of this rhetoric that should have been met with a more critical eye in reviewer circles. I'm not saying shadows game is secretly a masterpiece or something. It ain't. But they didnt treat just shadows game like that. They treat everything that isnt classic like that. Unleashed generations, even the rush games have been met with similar disdain. So that reviewer and older audience take means very little to me.

 

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

6 hours ago, batson said:

Two things;

First of all, I never said that a reason to dislike Shadow is because he brought about droves of similar fan-characters. What I'm saying is that some people make hypocrites of themselves by deriding such fan-characters while at the same time being okay with Shadow. Because like I said, Shadow is indistinguishable from such fan-characters. Every element that we find in edgy, overpowered and unoriginal fan-characters is also found in Shadow.

Those fan-characters are often given abilities, traits, or even darker (and more inappropriate) backstories that make Shadow seem modest by comparison. That’s often why they get ridiculed—there’s no sense of balance with them.

Shadow has at most 2-3 extra abilities over Sonic: Chaos Spear, Chaos Blast, and Chaos Control (which Sonic also shares), not counting those we haven’t seen a recurrence of. Not exactly overpowered when we also have Sonic characters that can firebrand (which Shadow can’t do), or throw things with their mind.

Not exactly overpowered—especially when Sonic can still beat Shadow despite those powers. And that pales compared to fan-characters that often make Shadow weak just to elevate their own.

Wouldn’t call that a fair assessment given how little Shadow’s powers have changed in the last 10 years.

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Secondly, Shadow was made fun of by adult gamers from day one. It's not really comparable to how Sonic and his 90's tude was taken at face value by pretty much everyone in 1991. Shadow was considered over the top edgy even back in the 00's, which is why his own game was mocked to hell and back as soon as the first trailer came out, both by professional game critics and by the older parts of the Sonic fanbase. Trust me, I was there.

Actually, yes they are comparable. Goes to show how times change and how franchises try to keep up to stay relevant. Both Sonic and Shadow were made to be cool edgy characters to draw in the crowd that receptive to that taste—they may represent different paradigms of it, but the same principles apply.

And if anyone had a problem with it back in the early 2000s before Shadow’s game, they sure were silent about it for a long time until 05 given the reception of the characters prior to that point.

[Shadowlax]

Short version.

Not gonna go too deep, but shadow , silver and blaze are pretty busted and they came from a time where everything was a shounen power progression and they got more busted. If you aren't a fan of that, I can totally see the argument of shadows power set being offputting.

Heck there is a good chance, they might go back into previous versions of things to make him more busted. I don't think them being kinda busted matters. Heck I think force of nature characters add a lot to the world, its why I like characters like magneto , or storm, or plasticman. But if you aren't a fan the argument is valid.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

I mean, why not do the reverse and make Sonic compare more to them?

Build him up, give him newer abilities to complement his speed in a way that still makes him look like a powerhouse to Shadow and Blaze? If people think Sonic looks too weak, find a way to strengthen him.

[Kuzu]

8 hours ago, batson said:

Two things;

First of all, I never said that a reason to dislike Shadow is because he brought about droves of similar fan-characters. What I'm saying is that some people make hypocrites of themselves by deriding such fan-characters while at the same time being okay with Shadow. Because like I said, Shadow is indistinguishable from such fan-characters. Every element that we find in edgy, overpowered and unoriginal fan-characters is also found in Shadow.

This is extremely disingenuous because that is blatantly untrue and I feel like you're conflating two things to make a point; most fan characters have elements that don't exist within any context of the franchise, whether it's classic, adventure or modern. And many of those elements on top of that. Shadow, for everything wrong with him, is at least grounded to Eggman by virtue of being created by his grandfather. That alone gives Shadow way more context than say, Coldsteel the Hedgehog. 

The latter type of characters are mocked for shoehorning as many "cool" traits, no matter if they fit within the series or not. And besides all of that...who the fuck cares? The fact that Shadow is still, to this day, an extremely popular character should prove that people felt he was a good addition to the series despite all of the mishandling of him. One or two dissenters on the Internet isn't going to change that.

8 hours ago, batson said:

Secondly, Shadow was made fun of by adult gamers from day one. It's not really comparable to how Sonic and his 90's tude was taken at face value by pretty much everyone in 1991. Shadow was considered over the top edgy even back in the 00's, which is why his own game was mocked to hell and back as soon as the first trailer came out, both by professional game critics and by the older parts of the Sonic fanbase. Trust me, I was there.

 

You're accusing Shadow of not being liked since day one, when once again, the dude is the literal most popular character just behind Sonic himself. There's no way you're going to convince me that he was never popular at all, because it's factually untrue based on evidence that actually happened. And this is ignoring the fact that most Nintendo fans saw Sonic as a shameless cash-in on 90's coolness and edge from the get-go. And you can see that by how characters that were created based on what Sonic tried to do, and all of the, crashed and burned before they ever took off. Radical Rex, Awesome Possum, Gex, etc etc etc.

 

Both Sonic & Shadow were created to cash-in on the contemporary idea of cool; Sonic was 90's radical edge, and Shadow was 2000's dark and dour edge. If you think Sonic was cool from the gate, power to you, you bought into the hype. But to turn around and say "Shadow was never cool" is not only factually untrue as I said, it makes you a massive hypocrite for being willing to accept Sonic's brand of coolness, while disparaging Shadow's; if you think Sonic was cooler than Shadow, then just leave it at that. 

3 minutes ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

I mean, why not do the reverse and make Sonic compare more to them?

Build him up, give him newer abilities to complement his speed in a way that still makes him look like a powerhouse to Shadow and Blaze? If people think Sonic looks too weak, find a way to strengthen him.

To a lot of people the appeal of Sonic is how simple yet effective his power-set is; so giving him more abilities probably takes away from that. On the flip sideide though, it does make Sonic look pretty unimpressive when everyone can do what he can, and then some. Its not even like a Luigi situation where he can jump higher than Mario, but has far worse controls than his brother. 

[Wraith]

"Sonic needs to be cool to adults" is still the most insane take I repeatedly see in the fanbase, probably.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

 

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To a lot of people the appeal of Sonic is how simple yet effective his power-set is; so giving him more abilities probably takes away from that. On the flip sideide though, it does make Sonic look pretty unimpressive when everyone can do what he can, and then some. Its not even like a Luigi situation where he can jump higher than Mario, but has far worse controls than his brother. 

Honestly starting to thing people are going about things the wrong way when that simplicity can and has resulted in things becoming stagnant to the point of boring.

It’s not like it’s asking for Sonic to bend metal with his mind—and while I know that’s an exaggeration on my part, it’s not like we can’t keep Sonic the character we know in spirit. Heck, the Movie gave him lightning abilities that could cause black outs.

[Kuzu]

8 minutes ago, Wraith said:

"Sonic needs to be cool to adults" is still the most insane take I repeatedly see in the fanbase, probably.

I get why people feel that way; Sonic was marketed in a way for tweens who didn't want to be seen as kids. The insane part is that people still feel Sonic is an "adult" game as actual adults. 

10 minutes ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

 

Honestly starting to thing people are going about things the wrong way when that simplicity can and has resulted in things becoming stagnant to the point of boring.

It’s not like it’s asking for Sonic to bend metal with his mind—and while I know that’s an exaggeration on my part, it’s not like we can’t keep Sonic the character we know in spirit. Heck, the Movie gave him lightning abilities that could cause black outs.

It honestly depends on how much you can stretch the character while still keeping his core intact; you already got people accusing Shadow of being a DBZ character with the amount of powers he has. 

Mario still runs and jumps to this very day, and the only additions to this movesets are complementary to that and tend to be temporary. 

[G-Force]

33 minutes ago, Shadowlax said:

Short version.

Not gonna go too deep, but shadow , silver and blaze are pretty busted and they came from a time where everything was a shounen power progression and they got more busted. If you aren't a fan of that, I can totally see the argument of shadows power set being offputting.

Heck there is a good chance, they might go back into previous versions of things to make him more busted. I don't think them being kinda busted matters. Heck I think force of nature characters add a lot to the world, its why I like characters like magneto , or storm, or plasticman. But if you aren't a fan the argument is valid.

See, the problem with your point here is that even if I wanted to agree that Shadow, Blaze, and Silver were all "force of nature" strong, the same would apply to Sonic these days.  I mean, the only thing that really made Shadow seem more powerful in the first place was Chaos Control, something Sonic eventually figured out he could also do.

These days I tend to view Sonic and Shadow as having a kind of Ryu & Ken or Mario & Luigi situation.  Same overall "fighting style," so to speak, different specialties.  They both favor a combination of speed, spin attacks, and Chaos powers, but Sonic leans very heavily toward the speed and spin attacks and Shadow leans toward the Chaos powers. 

I don't think it makes any sense to stress over Shadow being stronger, because the whole point of characters like Shadow is to be overcome.  Sonic overcame Shadow, so Shadow's not stronger.  Period.

[batson]

16 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

This is extremely disingenuous because that is blatantly untrue and I feel like you're conflating two things to make a point; most fan characters have elements that don't exist within any context of the franchise, whether it's classic, adventure or modern. And many of those elements on top of that. Shadow, for everything wrong with him, is at least grounded to Eggman by virtue of being created by his grandfather. That alone gives Shadow way more context than say, Coldsteel the Hedgehog.

Actually, being retroactively fitted into the lore of previously established characters is yet another trait of the kind of fan-characters that everyone makes fun of. Coldsteel the Hedgehog is very likely to be Sonic's long lost brother or the person who killed Tails' parents. So Shadow being the creation of Eggman's never before heard of grandfather is, again, exactly the kind of thing that if a fan-character had that backstoy then people would roll their eyes at it.

So again, as far as I'm concerned if your'e cool with Shadow then you better be cool with Coldsteel if you wanna remain consistent.

[Shadowlax]

 

 

22 minutes ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

I mean, why not do the reverse and make Sonic compare more to them?

Build him up, give him newer abilities to complement his speed in a way that still makes him look like a powerhouse to Shadow and Blaze? If people think Sonic looks too weak, find a way to strengthen him.

Why does he even need to really. Sonic's cool. He just knows a guy who can warp time and space and a guy who can move things with his mind and a girl who can do fire. Sonic's still cool and capable.

Those are some particularly powerful customers in his world. And I think that adds so much to his world. I want more characters like that.

Just because magneto exists doesn't make spiderman invalid. They are both tight

[Kuzu]

2 minutes ago, Shadowlax said:

 

 

Why does he even need to really. Sonic's cool. He just knows a guy who can warp time and space and a guy who can move things with his mind and a girl who can do fire. Sonic's still cool and capable.

Those are some particularly powerful customers in his world. And I think that adds so much to his world. I want more characters like that.

Just because magneto exists doesn't make spiderman invalid. They are both tight

Magneto exists in his own series, and is almost never involved in Spider Man stories. 

Shadow, Silver, and Blaze all exist within Sonic's stories; it's one thing when they're not involved, but when they are, the questions begs what makes Sonic special.

[Wraith]

1 minute ago, Kuzu said:

Shadow, Silver, and Blaze all exist within Sonic's stories; it's one thing when they're not involved, but when they are, the questions begs what makes Sonic special.

protagonist being under-powered compared to their opposition is like a basic storytelling thing and not something that needs fixing.

[Kuzu]

8 minutes ago, batson said:

Actually, being retroactively fitted into the lore of previously established characters is yet another trait of the kind of fan-characters that everyone makes fun of. Coldsteel the Hedgehog is very likely to be Sonic's long lost brother or the person who killed Tails' parents. So Shadow being the creation of Eggman's never before heard of grandfather is, again, exactly the kind of thing that if a fan-character had that backstoy then people would roll their eyes at it.

So again, as far as I'm concerned if your'e cool with Shadow then you better be cool with Coldsteel if you wanna remain consistent.

If you're just gonna conflate two issues that have nothing to do with each other to justify your hatred of Shadow, then I don't really see any point in talking about this any more.

Just say you hate Shadow dude and leave us alone. 

2 minutes ago, Wraith said:

protagonist being under-powered compared to their opposition is like a basic storytelling thing and not something that needs fixing.

Yea, but those characters aren't his opposition, they're allies on his side. You're right, it makes sense when they're in an antagonistic role, but not when they're all on the same side. 

 

It's a case of character balance; if you have a side character that's even more capable than the hero, then what makes the hero special? Its why you have mentors die in stories about heroes who are up and coming, to fuel the growth of the main character to surpass their mentor. If the mentor stayed alive and stayed ahead of this student, it defeats the purpose. 

[thumbs13]

Everyone has all these abilities only for the purpose of differentiating them. That doesn't stop the characters from being on equal terms every time they fight. Like, Blaze is apparently OP or something yet Sonic was able to fight her in Rush just fine. This isn't as much of an issue as people make it out to be. 

[Kuzu]

1 minute ago, thumbs13 said:

Everyone has all these abilities only for the purpose of differentiating them. That doesn't stop the characters from being on equal terms every time they fight. Like, Blaze is apparently OP or something yet Sonic was able to fight her in Rush just fine. This isn't as much of an issue as people make it out to be. 

I'm not really saying its an issue, I'm just making a point; but Blaze canonically can do everything Sonic can do, but has fire powers on top of that. So like...what does Sonic have if Blaze is already as fast as him?

[Shadowlax]

13 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

Magneto exists in his own series, and is almost never involved in Spider Man stories. 

Shadow, Silver, and Blaze all exist within Sonic's stories; it's one thing when they're not involved, but when they are, the questions begs what makes Sonic special.

Sonic's personality aesthetic and his interactions are why I find sonic interesting. I feel similarly about spiderman. I get your point. But I think there are more than abilities that make sonic special. And its kind of funny, because that is ironically kind of the point of shadow's character arc.

10 minutes ago, Wraith said:

protagonist being under-powered compared to their opposition is like a basic storytelling thing and not something that needs fixing.

Also this

18 minutes ago, G-Force said:

See, the problem with your point here is that even if I wanted to agree that Shadow, Blaze, and Silver were all "force of nature" strong, the same would apply to Sonic these days.  I mean, the only thing that really made Shadow seem more powerful in the first place was Chaos Control, something Sonic eventually figured out he could also do.

These days I tend to view Sonic and Shadow as having a kind of Ryu & Ken or Mario & Luigi situation.  Same overall "fighting style," so to speak, different specialties.  They both favor a combination of speed, spin attacks, and Chaos powers, but Sonic leans very heavily toward the speed and spin attacks and Shadow leans toward the Chaos powers. 

I don't think it makes any sense to stress over Shadow being stronger, because the whole point of characters like Shadow is to be overcome.  Sonic overcame Shadow, so Shadow's not stronger.  Period.

I don't find this line of conversation interesting. You are kind of ignoring what these characters are for your perception of them. For a power level argument I don't want to have.  I will say this, in the IDW comics, the one where sega is literally dictating shadow. Shadow beats a super person by himself , one that was previously giving knuckles and sonic the work. I'm not gonna say that the comic is the best depiction of the character. What I will say is that , how they present them there ( and how they have been presenting him for the past few years in various types of entertainment) is how they want him to be seen. He's a pretty strong guy. Again I don't want to have a power level argument, I don't care. But I just want to point out, your perceptions seems to be add odds without how shadow is being depicted and has been in media.

[Wraith]

6 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

 

Yea, but those characters aren't his opposition, they're allies on his side. You're right, it makes sense when they're in an antagonistic role, but not when they're all on the same side. 

 

It's a case of character balance; if you have a side character that's even more capable than the hero, then what makes the hero special? Its why you have mentors die in stories about heroes who are up and coming, to fuel the growth of the main character to surpass their mentor. If the mentor stayed alive and stayed ahead of this student, it defeats the purpose. 

Except no because Sonic beat the fuck out of all of those characters multiple times and it's been established multiple times that they struggle to get things done when he isn't there. They didn't 'stay ahead' of him. It's arguable if they were ever even ahead of him to begin with.

This is basic Sonic knowledge.

[batson]

2 hours ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

And if anyone had a problem with it back in the early 2000s before Shadow’s game, they sure were silent about it for a long time until 05 given the reception of the characters prior to that point.

Hmm. I seem to recall Shadow being divisive even back in 01, but I will admit that the scorn towards the character and what he stood for really kept building up between 01 and 05. Like I said, by the time his own game came out a lot of people had already proclaimed Shadow as the poster boy for everything wrong with the modern Sonic franchise. I remember showing the trailer to the game to my brother and he honest to God thought it was a fan-made parody because it was so over the top edgy.

Anyway CSS, remember years and years ago how you and I used to argue about Shadow like this? You were always on team Shadow while I was on team Knuckles. Like I said in my opening post, I've actually mostly kept my mouth shut about my Shadow-related opinions for many years now, but somehow I just felt the need to pour my heart out again. It brings back memories I guess.

[Shadowlax]

Just now, Wraith said:

Except no because Sonic beat the fuck out of all of those characters multiple times and it's been established multiple times that they struggle to get things done when he isn't there. They didn't 'stay ahead' of him. It's arguable if they were ever even ahead of him to begin with.

 

Just now, Wraith said:

This is basic Sonic knowledge.

What in the world are you talking about? And the characters struggling is kind of a highly criticized thing. Or is this an irony post I can't tell

[Kuzu]

7 minutes ago, Shadowlax said:

Sonic's personality aesthetic and his interactions are why I find sonic interesting. I feel similarly about spiderman. I get your point. But I think there are more than abilities that make sonic special. And its kind of funny, because that is ironically kind of the point of shadow's character arc.

I agree, but that's not really touching upon the power scaling part of the equation. Hell, Sonic only really gets through to these characters after literally beating them in a fight lol. 

6 minutes ago, Wraith said:

Except no because Sonic beat the fuck out of all of those characters multiple times and it's been established multiple times that they struggle to get things done when he isn't there. They didn't 'stay ahead' of him. It's arguable if they were ever even ahead of him to begin with.

This is basic Sonic knowledge.

This isn't a case of Dragon Ball Z where we actually see Goku train and get a new power up to surpass his rivals, that actually has some justification. But as far as the player can see, Sonic doesn't do that. 

So let's take your second point; if Sonic was already ahead of all of these characters, why is he "holding himself back" then. 

 

Oh my god, I'm actually doing a power scaling debate about Sonic.....

[Wraith]

2 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

 

This isn't a case of Dragon Ball Z where we actually see Goku train and get a new power up to surpass his rivals, that actually has some justification. But as far as the player can see, Sonic doesn't do that. 

So let's take your second point; if Sonic was already ahead of all of these characters, why is he "holding himself back" then. 

 

What are you even talking about?

[Shadowlax]

12 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

I agree, but that's not really touching upon the power scaling part of the equation. Hell, Sonic only really gets through to these characters after literally beating them in a fight lol. 

Power scaling only matters if you care for it to matter. And I don't think it does in sonic land. Silver could like, look at sonic and snap his neck. Or shadow could...I dunno break his spine in the stopped time. Those things wont happen, but they could hypothetically. Whether those potential things are relevant to your perception of those characters are up to you.

Like anyone can do anything with sonic power scalling. Knuckles could just, shift tactonic plates with his fist.

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This isn't a case of Dragon Ball Z where we actually see Goku train and get a new power up to surpass his rivals, that actually has some justification. But as far as the player can see, Sonic doesn't do that. 

So let's take your second point; if Sonic was already ahead of all of these characters, why is he "holding himself back" then. 

 

Oh my god, I'm actually doing a power scaling debate about Sonic.....

Also its not accurate? Most of sonic's bouts against shadow are inconclusive and they don't fight much in general.  Silver was clearly above and beyond sonic's capabilities at the time and shadow came in and saved his bacon. I think the only character sonic beat handily that became a regular cast member, is knuckles. So its not actually accurate. Particularly so nowadays when they aren't afraid of showing shadow being a pretty capable dude and doing things sonic can't do. Silver too, and blaze when she's around.

And I dunno , I personally don't think " Not getting anything done when he's not around" doesn't mean anything. Its often plot contrivances. That are not believed by the audience, like forces.