February 17, 2025
Confessions of a Sonic Fan
There are certain fandoms that seem to never die. Fandoms like Harry Potter, Star Wars, Pokemon, and more last for a lifetime. I just so happened to be in one of the most iconic — and cringiest — fandoms of all time.I was a Sonic kid. A huge Sonic kid.
Yeah, I’m very aware that the Sonic fandom has a reputation of being cringe and toxic. Thankfully, I was a child with very limited internet access.
I first laid eyes on the blue blur when I was about seven, with the TV show Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. To sum up the show, it was insane. Sonic and Tails have to fight Dr. Robotnik and his robo-goons, and it goes from 1 to 1,000 in less than five minutes. I had only two thoughts as I witnessed this: Sonic is awesome, and where can I find more?
Suddenly, I was whisked away into a whole new fandom. For the longest time, I was a dedicated Sonic fan. As I got older, I dove in deeper. Since we were mainly a Mario family, the only Sonic games I ever played were the Mario and Sonic Olympic games on the Wii. I learned about a lot of the characters and grew more and more attached to them.
During this time, I’d started developing my art and writing skills. When kids want to learn how to write and draw, they usually go towards things they know. I ended up drawing a lot of Sonic art, specifically in middle school. It got so bad that I got called into my 8th grade history class and asked to stop drawing Sonic characters. I didn’t stop making art, but it transformed into fan fiction. My first fanfiction.net account was dedicated to creating unfinished Sonic fan fictions. Before you ask — yes, I read them, and yes, they suck.
I thought after a while I would grow out of my Sonic phase, but I never really left the fandom. Once the movies started coming out, my love for the series came back in full force. I’ve been watching more Sonic cartoons, listening to the soundtracks, and even playing the games once or twice (change for parallelism) (I’m horrendous at games, so it was worth a shot). One thing I ended up taking away from this was that some things are a part of you, no matter how ridiculous they might be. Sonic is in my blood, and I’ll probably end up supporting this speedy rodent for the rest of my life. So if anyone takes anything away from this, embrace the cringe. You might realize how much it’s formed you today.