Skye Prower

"Can you recite it?" asked Harmony. --------- "I guess she's not in there," said Luna. -------- "We all are!" said Ziona.

Wow things got a little crazy here.... no more than usual though!

"Alright.  Where were we?" asked Harmony. -------- Luna followed after

"Wanna head back to learning?" asked Harmony. -------- "Good idea," said Luna.

YAY!

"You!" giggling Ziona, trying to poke Seviper on the nose but failing.

"That;s good," smiled Harmony. ---------- "A good place to look.  It is late," said Luna

"You alright?" asked Harmony. -------- "Where haven't you looked yet?" asked Luna.

Ziona smiled.  "I guess we're both a little dizzy."

"We're all fine!" laughed Ziona as she tried to stand up onto to fall over

"Are you okay?" asked Ziona, also a little dizzy.

Ooh!  Ooh!  Can I be Darth Revan?

Harmony patted Mark's head. ---------- "No luck?" asked Luna. --------- "WHEEEEE!" cried Ziona childishly, spreading her arms wide.

So it’s been a long, long while since my last review.  And next up is the Sally mini-series, which I’d like to do as single review.  That’ll be a big one to do and could take a bit of time (insert your own snarky comment here! ).  So given all that I thought I’d do a little extra.  A quick Look At something from the recent World’s Unite crossover.  So spoiler warnings even more in effect than normal.   Still here?  Okay!  I wanna take a look at what I think was one of the biggest missteps of the Crossover from a writing point-of-view, the handling of the death of Shadow.   A Look at: To Kill a Shadow.   To recap, in Part 4 of World’s Unite, Mega Man Issue 50, Mobius and Earth started to Fuse.  GUN’s Helicarrier… er, sorry, I mean Cloudbase, er, no, the Valiant…… Darn it….  GUN’s flying aircraft carrier starts to merge, somehow, with a Government building.  I feel I should point out both are in mid-air which makes zero sense.  But we see inside the fusing aircraft/building to see Shadow and Rouge trying to evacuate, then exterior cut to both building and aircraft exploding.  Sonic sees one of Shadow’s Inhibitor Rings falling from the explosion, runs to catch it, and assumes Shadow is dead because of it.   So, what’s the problem here? There’s several.  Let’s start with the biggest one.  Everything about the situation suggests Shadow is not dead.  How about a list…   We don’t see the death, or the body.  Now of course given the target age group we wouldn’t expect to see the death itself, but not seeing either is a common shorthand in fiction for ‘not really dead’.  (Of course, even seeing a body is no guarantee of death in a world with robots, clones, magic etc etc)  You could have even had Sonic and the other react to finding the body while we the reader do not see it directly.    Shadow tends to come back.  It is kinda his stich.  Admittedly mostly because almost every version of Sonic he’s in does their own Sonic Adventure 2 adaption, but still, Shadow seeming to be dead but not is pretty common.   A loose Inhibitor Ring is a stronger sign of survival.  Shadow takes his rings off when circumstances are dire to give him a power boost.  So in this case the scenario rights itself.  Seeing the imminent disaster, Shadow removes his Rings in to Chaos Control everyone to safety.   You do not kill off a main character in such a cheap way.  Especially not a character who is probably the most popular and well known after the main trio.  Well…. Unless you’re a Star Trek writer.  Those guys do NOT know how to handle a death scene unless the guy dying is called Spock.   All these together kill the impact of Shadow’s death by making it way more likely he survived.  So why even kill him in the first place?  Well there are usually three reasons for killing a character.  First is real life issues.  Such as an actor quitting a TV show.  Of course, the comics have had more than their fair share of those, but it’s unlikely to be the case here.  Second is to thin out the cast.  Now an argument could be made for this, given that combining the Sonic and Mega-Man character pool does result in several characters.  But conversely, at the end of the cross-over there are so many characters that one more wouldn’t have made a difference.  Besides, there was no reason for Shadow and GUN’s Val-heli-base to be near New Mobotropolis.   Also, if it was just to remove Shadow from the fights, death was unnecessary.  Having overused his powers saving everyone resulting in weakness/coma would have sufficed.   The final reason, and most likely, is to show how serious a situation is.  It must be if a main character is dead.  But this backfires.  First because of the death scene indicating more that Shadow is alive and second because there is no way Shadow could be killed off permanently along with Rouge, in such an unsatisfying way.  As such, it is a clear signpost that the story has gone from ‘THIS IS SERIOUS’ to ‘This will all be reset so it never happened’, therefore nothing in the story matters.  It is one thing to have a reset at the end of a story.  It is another when the reader is certain it’s coming from the first act.  If the impact wished to be maintained, a prominent side character should have been the victim.  Honey the Cat or Quake Woman come to mind.  Both could be killed off but are minor/side character who nevertheless have large roles (well, Honey’ role is small but it’s large for the reboot) but could be killed of without the reader thinking ‘Nah, they’d never do that’.   And so, killing Shadow is a misstep, first because the immediate impact is lost by the evidence suggesting he survived, and second because it is a sign, if you believe he’s dead, of the inevitable reset button, and therefore nothing of consequence will occur within the story.  It could have been the plan that Shadow was meant to reappear nearer the end but didn’t, but in not doing so the damage is done.  

Harmony smiled a little. ----------- There wasn't any reply.  Zoe was sitting unhappily in the arboretum.

"Oh I am!" giggled Ziona.  "It's like I'm a little kid being spun around!"

"You're having fun!" chuckled Ziona.

Hmm, in that case, you might want to post up an 'introduction' story, trying to make as many points about your AU clear to the audience as possible.  That'll save any continuity mix ups.

"So I've taught you that you can;t be taught everything?" smiled Harmony. ----------- Luna waited and watched.

"No," said Harmony.  "Not everything.  Some things can only be experienced." -------- Luna smiled and followed.

"I'm not sure it's something that can be taught," said Melody. ----------- "I'm sure you will!" smiled Luna.

"Whhhhheeeeeee!" giggled Ziona.

Shouldn't you be slowly digesting then?

"Whoa!" squealed Ziona, starting to laugh.  "I think I do!)