#it's been a while since I've last had a good rant about Sonic the Hedgehog

[tev-the-random]

I know this is very sudden, but allow me to rant about Sonic 06-

*the crowd boos*

LISTEN! It's not about the game itself, that is a story for another post. I specifically want to talk about Princess Elise-

*the crowd boos harder*

Hear me out: Elise had so much potential to be such a fascinating character. It's all right there. So I'm talking about it. Buckle up, I'm putting this girl in a blender 17 years after her game died.

The absurd missed potential of Elise really boils down to her role in the story as a damsel in distress and how heavily the game imposes that role on her, even when it's unnecessary/uninteresting. Point in case, she gets kidnapped and rescued four different times. In one game. But why? What purpose does this serve?

I believe Elise's repeated kidnapping is but a cheap narrative escape. They don't know how to make Sonic and Elise bond, so they repeat the act of him saving her over and over again to drive in the fact that he's a hero and she's... I don't know, she's just a princess.

Just a princess. That traps her into the tiny box that is the stereotypical damsel in distress, and a macguffing for the whole Iblis thing, at most. But that doesn't really suit her background at all, does it? All of the stuff that's given to us tells us that Elise should be more than that.

Ok so, the story goes out of its way to tell us that, for 10 whole years, Elise was not allowed to cry. Not a single tear. That's her main thing, that she has a warped sense of duty and doesn't get to feel much. But did she even know why? The way the story shows it, it doesn't seem like she does, at least not entirely; she was passed out cold when the whole "let's infuse half of a god into your soul" stuff happened. So in a way, this behaviour could be treated as trauma instilled on her by her father drilling the idea of "a strong queen doesn't cry, stop crying, just smile" into her head — we do see a flashback of him directly saying that to her when she was little and crying on his lap. And this would have been a fine point of her character arc, if only they had concluded it in a more... well, conclusive way. By showing her and the audience that the duke was wrong; crying is healthy and not a display of weakness, and her father's "crying is wrong" speech is bullshit. Or even just by having her realise that not crying at all has a negative impact on her health, because it should.

But if we assume that Elise did know why she couldn't cry, the story gets more interesting. Because it's not as if she held back tears for 10 years — a near-impossible feat for a normal human being — just for her pride or because she believed in those toxic words of the past, but because she needed to. There's a fucking monster inside of her and this CHILD is tasked with keeping it locked away all on her own. If she cries, the whole world will end. So she sees a purpose in being emotionally distant: if she closes herself off to all emotions and reactions, she will suppress her need to cry. If she doesn't allow herself to feel anything, she will be able to keep the world safe.

But like, if she ever breaks a leg, she's not allowed to cry, because she doesn't want one stupid broken leg to cause the end of the world. She swallows the pain in silence.

She lost her father, who apparently was her only parental figure, at a young age and was left alone to learn how to tend to the kingdom. She had to attend her own father's funeral, knowing that she had potentially contributed to his death by being in the lab that day. And she was not allowed to have a little cry about it.

That's a lot of pressure, but it's not like she can complain, so she just has to deal with it as best as she can. Which in the game is shown by having Elise be a bit... bland, I guess? At times, I don't know if her weird way of responding to things was intentional or if it was just bad writing.

Either way, I feel like a better way for that to reflect on her character would be to make her stoic, cold and impassive when interacting with others. For her to be unresponsive to Sonic's jokes and Eggman's threats at the start of the game. As the story progresses, she gets to mature emotionally and realise how fucked up she is and how all of these bottled feelings are killing her inside.

Sonic bonds with Elise by providing opportunities and encouragement for her to feel things and express herself. He can see that she cares a lot about things, but it's buried deep down; he sees that beneath all the fear and responsibility she imposes on herself, there's a girl who cherishes her kingdom and loves the people around her fiercely.

But how to bring her out of her shell?

Instead of bringing Elise back to her castle only for her to be kidnapped again — Eggman does have robots all over the kingdom looking for her, — Sonic decides to bring her along for the adventure. After all, she should want to defeat Eggman and the threat he poses to Soleanna. With that, Elise can have more time to bond with other characters without having her whole personality sacrificed to a trope that does not server her or the story.

And the thing is, at first, she doesn't really believe in herself. She only sees herself as the vessel of Iblis, she doesn't know how to fight or run fast or anything like that. But Sonic pulls her along anyway, because she's determined and, believe it or not, she does have power.

And she laughs. She screams, she gasps, she gets a hug. Because if there is something Sonic knows very well, is that the world is beautiful and everyone should get to live life to the fullest.

Now please picture me this: Elise has a hidden feisty personality. As the story progresses and she slowly opens up, she starts showing a tiny little bit of a sarcastic side. She learns that she's an absolute sucker for adventure and speed and daring situations, a real thrill seeker. She starts somewhat confronting Eggman when he kidnaps her — listen, I'm not saying she shouldn't be kidnapped at all, it kind of ruins the fun of it if there are no stakes, but four times is a bit much — and expressing all her pent up anger.

Picture me an Elise who is so done with this shit while also being glad to blow some stuff up. She has that soft side of love and care but also fuck Eggman.

It's during this whole adventure that she gets to meet the cast. And holy shit.

The potential that the Elise & Blaze duo had, man. Elise has a FIRE monster inside of her, it would make so much sense for Iblis to manifest through FIRE powers. And you know who else has fire powers? You know who else is a princess? Who else started her journey as an emotionally stunted stranger who learns to open up thanks to Sonic & co.?

Blaze the Cat

YES, CAN ANYONE HEAR ME? WHY THE HELL DID THESE TWO NOT INTERACT AT ALL???

It being the "Flames of Disaster", Elise can only see Iblis as a source of devastation and pain. She's scared of ever tapping into that side of herself, for her responsibility is just to lock it away and never look at it. But she can't escape it. And it would have been beautiful for Blaze to teach her how to come to terms with it and harness her fire for warmth, light and protection instead of destruction — but also destruction, because you know, sometimes blowing stuff up is fun.

That would grant character development not only for Elise, but also for Blaze, who gets to see a form of Iblis she never imagined before. Iblis is a world-destroying monster, she can't control or defeat it even if she has a connection to it through the flames; but maybe that's not their job to do. They shouldn't be wasting their time running around trying to kill some hedgehog, they should be protecting Elise from being used by Eggman! — Because surely that's what caused the end of the world, right? Eggman being too greedy and freeing a beast he couldn't control? Seems like a logical conclusion by all Blaze knows.

And Elise meeting Silver. Oh my fucking god.

She remembers him. That is literally the first thing she sees when she meets Sonic! She remembers Silver from when she was a child, she remembers he saved her. He was the one who even remotely tried to comfort her when her father died and the one who witnessed the might of what's inside of her. If anything, she must have spent years wondering if she just imagined him or not, this must be such a surreal encounter!

(It was either that or she actually saw the destroyed future and Silver via Iblis or something, I'm not really sure what that first scene was supposed to be. But I'm going with the "she remembers him" path)

At first, Silver doesn't know her, of course; he's only here for Sonic! But when he travels back to the Solaris Project incident, everything changes. And as much as Silver wants to be bitter about how simple the origins of their problems were — how all of it could have been avoided if only those scientists weren't so greedy, if only they had been able to destroy the base form of Iblis before it became a monster, if only the responsibility of keeping it at bay hadn't been put on a little girl, if only she had been able to keep it trapped forever, if only, if only, if only — he can't find it in himself to be anything but compassionate towards Elise. The two of them are very alike, in a way: burdened with the weight of the world, a responsibility they never asked for, but unable to give it to anybody else or give up because they care too much.

So that's the irony of Silver's story: he came to the past with the intent of ending a life, when this whole time he was supposed to save a life. Not just to save his future, but because Elise, like him, was robbed of many things, and it's not fair. He wants to go back to his time knowing Elise would live to see a safe and happy future for herself for as long as she lived. If he couldn't save the future, then at least he can change the past and delay the inevitable, give this world a little more time.

Oh and that's not even to mention Mephiles. He himself is a wonderful villain, but the fact that he never interacted with Elise is such a shame.

Think of the direct influence Mephiles could have on Elise as the other half of Solaris. The ways in which he could have tried to deceive her. Yeah, he wants to drag this out and see everyone suffer for as long as possible, but he has a damn queen in his board, why should he only play with the pawns?

It could have helped push the story just a little further by having him communicate with Elise in any way, shape or form. Replace Eggman kidnapping her 137 times with Mephiles luring Elise and using her bottled up feelings against her. Let her be Solaris' unwilling ticking time bomb.

And of course, I couldn't leave this without talking about the big issue everyone has with Elise. The fact that most people only ever remember her as that random human girl who kissed Sonic that one time. Not only was that whole romance uncalled for, but I feel like the story could have benefited a lot more from their platonic feelings. Hell, let Elise be her own damn character. Let Sonic have a positive influence on her without breaking everything else. Let them remain as friends at the end of the story without resetting everything — and really, just let her know that, even if Sonic leaves Soleanna tomorrow, she'll be ok; she's more than ok now, actually.

TLDR; Princess Elise from Sonic 2006 could have been such a cool character with complex emotions, the fact that her legacy is what it is is really sad to me.

#make Elise set fire to things actually I think that would be fun. give this girl some whimsy in her life #*deflates* #it's been a while since I've last had a good rant about Sonic the Hedgehog #just finished the second season of Sonic Prime. Saw the last update of Sonic P-06 a few days ago too so I was in the mood today #Sonic 06 brings me so much nostalgia #Sonic Frontiers actually reminds me of it a little bit #In a good way #I'm glad with the direction the franchise is going on right now. RIP to 2006 tho #Sonic the Hedgehog #Princess Elise #Sonic 06 #character analysis #(kind of? very loosely) #TEV Talk