Was Amy ever THAT bad?

[StaticMania]

No one's ignoring the context of those scenes, Amy's goal/contrived reasoning just is the most disliked.

[Red Hot Jack]

Nah, I'm not convinced in any way that bad writing justifies Amy's obsession. It just wasn't sane IMO.

[DabigRG]

14 hours ago, D.H said:

It's been a while since I've played Heroes, but IIRC, the only time Amy actually left Team Rose behind to chase Sonic was after they had completed their mission of rescuing their friends, which Cream & Big didn't really have an issue with. Hell, lame reasoning aside, Team Rose actually had a good reason to confront Team Sonic in the story mode since the newspaper at the beginning of their story showed Sonic with Chocola & Froggy. 

I was being metaphorical about the Team Battle after Grand Metropolis' Power Plant.

https://youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3Dh2RADIzXkPE&ved=2ahUKEwjuuvnFks_pAhWVl3IEHY-nBb8QwqsBMAF6BAgHEAM&usg=AOvVaw2i-RtMCdHny5NUJiEPU_vV 

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In regards to them actually saying it, yeah, that's a line that has popped up recently when talking about the current portrayals of Amy Rose. Most notably in the recent AMA on reddit.

Oh ho, of course.

Thanks for telling me.

14 hours ago, 4th Chaos Emerald said:

You mean making inventions? Like he did in the beginning of SA1? And he's back to cowering without Sonic to Choas 0, which we seen he can fight on his own in the Adventure games.

That doesn't detract from the fact that he was an effective, competent, and independent hero in his own right who repeatedly played a part in saving the day at all.

People got mad about Chaos 0 specifically because of all he'd done before, including helping fight Chaos 4.

14 hours ago, 4th Chaos Emerald said:

 

?

And also, if you're going to bring up Amy's worst moments, you should bring up everyone's bad moments. Because every character had their moments.

Everyone has bad moments, but how many do they have compared to her, especially when the balance of their good is involved?

[D.H]

6 hours ago, The KKM said:

Being a fighting game, EVERYONE's hyper-aggressive in it. Faulting the characters for it feels to me a bit like faulting characters in a racing game for wanting to solve everything with racing.

 

EDIT: Really, these arguments are really sort of bizarre to me because it feels like everyone's coming from an alien world with alien versions of these games where context doesn't exist. Like, she didn't corner Sonic to make her marry him in SA2, she bantered a bit before rescuing him regardless. She wanted to beat him in Heroes, but as it turns out cutscenes exist to facilitate gameplay and EVERYONE wanted to beat everyone so we could have those bossfights.

Yet it feels it's only with Amy that people insist in not taking things like that in context, ignoring stuff like Espio wanting to steal Cheese instead of asking "is that your Chao, little girl, because we're rescuing Chao and if you just found that one that might be one of the Chao we're rescuing" but making sure every single little exaggerated-for-gameplay Amy moment or comedic short-tempered moment sticks around and is never forgotten, overshadowing everything else she was doing.

And now here's the result. She's been turned into Minnie Mouse but responsible. She spends Lost World just going "oh me oh my", she spends Forces and IDW doing leadership stuff, she's made into the bossy almost-"Karen" of the group in Sonic Boom for laughs. As usual, Sega overcorrecting things, and then patting themselves for it (you seen that Sega guy say how proud they were of how Amy now isn't a damsel in distress? Despite her not having been so for like 20 years?). But I can't help but be frustrated because their overcorrections are addressing complaints that by and large shouldn't exist in the first place.

Hope we can eventually get a fun energetic optimistic lovable Amy back.

To be fair, I don't think this is exclusive to Amy Rose, but many Sonic fans have had a tendency to "blame the wrong people," when it comes to some of the problems in the series. I mean for example, how many times have people acted like the issue with Shadow/Knuckles/Silver etc. was the mere concept of some of these characters, rather than the fact that the people writing the stories to certain games completely dropped the ball on the characters?

The same thing happened with Amy, where some people felt like the mere idea of her character was wrong & needed to be overhauled, thus leading to SEGA doing what they do best towards criticism & leap to the complete opposite of the extreme, while still having her do next to nothing in the actual games. Amy can still be energetic & lovable (I liked her in IDW's 2nd issue for example), but hopefully we get more of that rather than more of the Amy we've been getting recently in the future.

[E-122-Psi]

9 minutes ago, D.H said:

To be fair, I don't think this is exclusive to Amy Rose, but many Sonic fans have had a tendency to "blame the wrong people," when it comes to some of the problems in the series. I mean for example, how many times have people acted like the issue with Shadow/Knuckles/Silver etc. was the mere concept of some of these characters, rather than the fact that the people writing the stories to certain games completely dropped the ball on the characters?

The same thing happened with Amy, where some people felt like the mere idea of her character was wrong & needed to be overhauled, thus leading to SEGA doing what they do best towards criticism & leap to the complete opposite of the extreme, while still having her do next to nothing in the actual games. Amy can still be energetic & lovable (I liked her in IDW's 2nd issue for example), but hopefully we get more of that rather than more of the Amy we've been getting recently in the future.

Pretty much, Amy being a lovesick character that has a bratty temper isn't a bad concept, the SA series didn't do a horrible job of it, and even in Heroes her worst moment is limited to one scene where nearly everyone drops the ball. The big problem was that it was WAY too easy to depict that in the most obnoxious way possible for laughs. She's lovesick? Let's make her an obsessive stalker. She has a temper? Let's make a 'scary nutjob girl' everyone's afraid of getting beaten up by. Works GREAT with the stalker route. Let's just make Amy crazy. SO FUNNY. Never done before.

This is the general problem with flanderization, writers get lethargic with a character and overplay or skew their key characteristics into obnoxious gags to squeeze jokes out of them more easily, likability and depth be damned.

[D.H]

3 minutes ago, E-122-Psi said:

Pretty much, Amy being a lovesick character that has a bratty temper isn't a bad concept, the SA series didn't do a horrible job of it, and even in Heroes her worst moment is limited to one scene where nearly everyone drops the ball. The big problem was that it was WAY too easy to depict that in the most obnoxious way possible for laughs. She's lovesick? Let's make her an obsessive stalker. She has a temper? Let's make a 'scary nutjob girl' everyone's afraid of getting beaten up by. Works GREAT with the stalker route. Let's just make Amy crazy. SO FUNNY. Never done before.

This is the general problem with flanderization, writers get lethargic with a character and overplay or skew their key characteristics into obnoxious gags to squeeze jokes out of them more easily, likability and depth be damned.

Yup. Knuckles fell victim to the same problem, having his naivety flanderized to the point that he becomes downright stupid, same with Big having his simple-minded nature overdone, or Shadow's attitude morphing him into Vegeta The Hedgehog in recent years, etc. etc.

It doesn't make the concept of these characters bad, nor does it mean that the flanderization of these characters should fall on anyone other than the people not doing these characters justice. Between several games like Sonic Adventure 1-2, Heroes, Unleashed, the (mainly late-preboot & reboot) Archie comics, as well as most of Sonic X, there has been several forms of media in the series that depicted Amy as a solid character, that was still lovesick & having a bratty temper. More than often than not, the problem is usually bad writers, rather than bad characters.

[DabigRG]

13 hours ago, Sega DogTagz said:

eh, 50/50. The idea of Cream being a pacifist is built directly into her character. The reason why she was developed with a Chao attack in Advance 2 was so that she wouldn't completely shatter her aura of a sweet innocent little bunny. Furthermore, her detest of violence is something that is constantly brought up in bio's and supporting materials. 

Battle was certainly the most extreme example - to the point where she wouldn't even fight back against something that was trying to kill her - but her anti-violence stance has lingered on before and after Battle.

 

 

Okay... let's make that her tenure as a flat out passivist instead.

 

9 hours ago, Tornado said:

. The only Sonic Team-related thing in this time period where she actually had a personality (as opposed to a collection of traits pulled from Yandere Simulator) was Sonic X, of all things.

Truly, Amy Rose was ahead of her time.

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Which is funny in itself, because she was even more broken in Battle than she was in Chronicles. Makes the whole thing come off as a World of Cardboard speech instead.

Dammit, I knew it.

9 hours ago, StaticMania said:

Cream becoming a super hero who resents how weak the rest of the world is...is just ripe parody material.

"This world isn't perfect...."

 

6 hours ago, The KKM said:

 

Yet it feels it's only with Amy that people insist in not taking things like that in context, ignoring stuff like Espio wanting to steal Cheese instead of asking "is that your Chao, little girl, because we're rescuing Chao and if you just found that one that might be one of the Chao we're rescuing" but making sure every single little exaggerated-for-gameplay Amy moment or comedic short-tempered moment sticks around and is never forgotten, overshadowing everything else she was doing.

Oh yeah, that fight was almost entirely in him. Heck, even the in-game boss loading is framed between him and Cream.

6 hours ago, The KKM said:

And now here's the result. She's been turned into Minnie Mouse but responsible.

Not a very high opinion of the Queen, eh?

6 hours ago, The KKM said:

As usual, Sega overcorrecting things, and then patting themselves for it (you seen that Sega guy say how proud they were of how Amy now isn't a damsel in distress? Despite her not having been so for like 20 years?). 

That guy clearly didn't know what he was talking about then.

6 hours ago, StaticMania said:

No one's ignoring the context of those scenes, Amy's goal/contrived reasoning just is the most disliked.

Effectively.

[E-122-Psi]

51 minutes ago, D.H said:

Yup. Knuckles fell victim to the same problem, having his naivety flanderized to the point that he becomes downright stupid, same with Big having his simple-minded nature overdone, or Shadow's attitude morphing him into Vegeta The Hedgehog in recent years, etc. etc.

It doesn't make the concept of these characters bad, nor does it mean that the flanderization of these characters should fall on anyone other than the people not doing these characters justice. Between several games like Sonic Adventure 1-2, Heroes, Unleashed, the (mainly late-preboot & reboot) Archie comics, as well as most of Sonic X, there has been several forms of media in the series that depicted Amy as a solid character, that was still lovesick & having a bratty temper. More than often than not, the problem is usually bad writers, rather than bad characters.

I feel like Sonic X might have been the 'franchise original sin' for Amy though, since while it kept some degree of depth for her, it was the start of Amy's negative traits being taken to their extreme and being rude or violent to even her friends with little provocation (it was an anime, can't be one without a token violent tsundere). The third season underplayed Amy's actual involvement and the end result was pretty much her flanderized self fully fledged. I do think Sonic X had a negative effect on other medias since they tended to borrow the more exagerrated flaws from the anime rather than the better depths they established, resulting in them just taking stuff like 'dumb Knuckles/psycho Amy/passive aggressive Cream' for gags without any of the more positive elements to balance it (though even then I could argue games Amy never got quite the same 'unhinged' dent to her as her spin off counterparts did, anime and even Archie Amy felt like someone even her closest friends were afraid would maim them in a psychotic rage for the slightest indiscretion, while games Amy was openly treated as just an annoying brat at her worst most of the time).

[Kuzu]

The longer a series goes on, the easier flanderization tends to happen.

[4th Chaos Emerald]

9 hours ago, StaticMania said:

No one's ignoring the context of those scenes, Amy's goal/contrived reasoning just is the most disliked.

It's moreso people don't care to understand the character

[StaticMania]

Just now, 4th Chaos Emerald said:

It's moreso people don't care to understand the character

I'm all for this line of thinking when people aren't actually addressing what they dislike about a character.

It's a good thing to do. Do it more.

[ComeAsYouAre]

8 hours ago, Kuzu said:

The longer a series goes on, the easier flanderization tends to happen.

I agree with this

[E-122-Psi]

Flanderization isn't ALWAYS bad, punctuating on certain traits can help a character stand out more (generally spin offs making Omega more comedic help him seem more memorable for example) but the problem is when it starts effecting their role or likability. The character loses their human qualities. I think this was the issue with going more and more with the 'unstable stalker' approach with Amy, that's a VERY worrying archetype to grant to a hero you're supposed to root for, not to mention diminished Amy's chemistry potential, since then pretty much everyone was in 'please don't let her kill me' mode around her. It's the worst side effect of flanderization; making the character an unlikeable single gag.

Of course deflanderising Amy to the point she has no punctuated characteristics wasn't a good idea either since now they don't really have ANYTHING, not even that one gag. The best that can be said about current Amy is that she is at least more likeable, if unremarkably so.

[Kuzu]

Amy's biggest problem is that, and it's one Tails has even more than  her, is despite being a main character, she's been relegated to mostly secondary roles. 

You can count on one hand how many roles she's had when she takes center stage, and how many of those roles really flesh out her character and role.

Even in Sonic Boom, she's still mostly used as a foil to other characters to play off rather than the episodes being about her specifically.

 

It is extremely difficult to avoid flanderization when a character is never able to be fleshed out beyond their base characterization. So if Amy had more roles that fleshed her out, I don't think she'd be as bad.

[Wraith]

I thought she was entertaining in Sonic X so I didn't really mind the 'flanderization' there. I haven't noticed too much of a shift with her modern interpretation either to be honest. I think toning down her crush too much could be a mistake if it ever becomes so muted that it stops being obvious, but they might be able to find another groove with her if they're forced to try other things, I guess. 

At any rate, I can't take Sega's attempts to craft a more 'independent' character out of Amy seriously. Making Amy the catch all role model for girls  while making no changes to her role or any of the other roles of the girls in the series is inauthentic anyway. Blaze is still nonexistent and Rouge is still Shadow's secretary as of Forces. Tails is allowed to be a little ball of insecurity, It's not that big of a deal of Amy is messy and underpowered too as long as she's not the only female character that shows up. Have more active female characters to start with so you don't have to count on one to be exemplary. 

[DabigRG]

21 minutes ago, Wraith said:

, It's not that big of a deal of Amy is messy and underpowered too as long as she's not the only female character that shows up. Have more active female characters to start with so you don't have to count on one to be exemplary. 

Hmhmhm...are we talking about Amy or Zeena?

[E-122-Psi]

1 hour ago, Kuzu said:

Amy's biggest problem is that, and it's one Tails has even more than  her, is despite being a main character, she's been relegated to mostly secondary roles. 

You can count on one hand how many roles she's had when she takes center stage, and how many of those roles really flesh out her character and role.

Even in Sonic Boom, she's still mostly used as a foil to other characters to play off rather than the episodes being about her specifically.

 

It is extremely difficult to avoid flanderization when a character is never able to be fleshed out beyond their base characterization. So if Amy had more roles that fleshed her out, I don't think she'd be as bad.

I feel like Boom made her feel more effective as a supporting character since she had that voice of compassion more fleshed out and proactive (compared to X and Archie where she was usually just comic relief when not getting top billing). She was the one most liable to call out when a situation was going pear shaped or someone was acting up (or she THOUGHT it was, they let her be fallible). In other medias this element of her is kept kind of secondary and passive at best and as a voice of empathy/reason, she kind of ends up overshadowed by many other characters, especially when Amy's petty temper at the time was more liable to make her look like a hypocrite. I mean in the 06/Storybook era Sonic was a fluent voice of wisdom, how could she compete with him?

I remember Boom giving her a reasonable amount of episodes though, at least in Season One. Maybe not as many as Sonic, Tails and Eggman, but I definitely think she got more than Sticks and maybe even Knuckles.

I think this is still an issue with current Amy since she's not so much mature as she is well behaved and knows her place in the background.

[DabigRG]

1 minute ago, E-122-Psi said:

I feel like Boom made her feel more effective as a supporting character since she had that voice of compassion more fleshed out and proactive. She was the one most liable to call out when a situation was going pear shaped or someone was acting up (or she THOUGHT it was, they let her be fallible). In other medias this element of her is kept kind of secondary and passive at best and as a voice of empathy/reason, she kind of ends up overshadowed by many other characters. I mean in the 06/Storybook era Sonic was a fluent voice of wisdom, how could she compete with him?

I remember Boom giving her a reasonable amount of episodes though, at least in Season One. Maybe not as many as Sonic, Tails and Eggman, but I definitely think she got more than Sticks and maybe even Knuckles.

She was a major feature of a lot of episodes, it's just that there were only a handful that explicitly started by her.

[Kuzu]

2 hours ago, E-122-Psi said:

I feel like Boom made her feel more effective as a supporting character since she had that voice of compassion more fleshed out and proactive (compared to X and Archie where she was usually just comic relief when not getting top billing). She was the one most liable to call out when a situation was going pear shaped or someone was acting up (or she THOUGHT it was, they let her be fallible). In other medias this element of her is kept kind of secondary and passive at best and as a voice of empathy/reason, she kind of ends up overshadowed by many other characters, especially when Amy's petty temper at the time was more liable to make her look like a hypocrite. I mean in the 06/Storybook era Sonic was a fluent voice of wisdom, how could she compete with him?

I remember Boom giving her a reasonable amount of episodes though, at least in Season One. Maybe not as many as Sonic, Tails and Eggman, but I definitely think she got more than Sticks and maybe even Knuckles.

I think this is still an issue with current Amy since she's not so much mature as she is well behaved and knows her place in the background.

Nope. Amy got two episodes about her, Knuckles got seven.

And she still kind of suffered from flanderization to an extent when her character transitioned to being considered nagging by the other characters iirc.

[batson]

Just a reminder that flanderization isn't always bad. Ned Flanders himself would never have become one of The Simpsons most popular characters if he hadn't turned ultra-religious. That's what makes him funny.

[StaticMania]

Flanderization is a marked improvement for characters on the bland side.

Not so much for characters like AMY Rose who are already well rounded.

[Kuzu]

Yea, Flanderization only works if the character being flanderized was considered bland and uninteresting.

When you take a character that's rounded and turn them into a caricature of themselves, it tends to rub people the wrong way.

 

If anything, Amy's undergone reverse flanderization.

[E-122-Psi]

1 hour ago, Kuzu said:

Nope. Amy got two episodes about her, Knuckles got seven.

And she still kind of suffered from flanderization to an extent when her character transitioned to being considered nagging by the other characters iirc.

Fortress of Squalitude.

Chez Amy.

Closed Door Policy.

Fuzzy Puppy Buddies.

Cabin Fever.

Give Bees a Chance.

Sticks and Amy's Excellent Staycation.

 

Sure it's still not a huge amount and some of them are shared with other characters but Amy did get center stage in more than two episodes. There were also some group episodes that felt like Amy was getting a key role (while Into the Wilderness is mostly a butt monkey episode for Sonic and Knuckles, I like how Amy gets something of actual character development learning to adapt).

I do agree with the whole nagging flanderization (shame since she did keep a lot of her old energy in the early episodes) though even then the later Amy was still something of a rounded character instead of a one note gag, just not one as closely associated with Amy (I still think Sally could have fit that persona better).

[Kuzu]

I'm tenuous to count episodes shared with other characters; mostly because while it's true she still plays a key role, it's mostly in relation to the rest of the cast, rather than the episode being about her specifically. Of the episodes that are exclusively about Amy, its Chez Amy and Give Bees a Chance (The latter being written by Cindy Robinson herself hilariously)

But yes, she's still pretty well rounded in spite of that since there are enough episodes where she's a prominent supporting character. Its like a slighty improved version of what they're attempting with her now.

[E-122-Psi]

32 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

I'm tenuous to count episodes shared with other characters; mostly because while it's true she still plays a key role, it's mostly in relation to the rest of the cast, rather than the episode being about her specifically. Of the episodes that are exclusively about Amy, its Chez Amy and Give Bees a Chance (The latter being written by Cindy Robinson herself hilariously)

But yes, she's still pretty well rounded in spite of that since there are enough episodes where she's a prominent supporting character. Its like a slighty improved version of what they're attempting with her now.

I tend to judge limelight episode by if they're the title character or if the plot or parable is mostly directed towards their character (eg. Closed Door Policy is arguably ensemble focused, but it is Amy's personality that is driving it and is the one who is forced into the dynamic role of acknowledging and amending a mistake she made).