WARNING: (Explicit Tag) (Contains strong language)
A silly question maybe to some. We see the “fanboys” everywhere, but with the recent news that a YouGov poll found more women to be fans of Sonic than men, we were just curious where are they?
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Is the Sonic community too male focused. How many female Sonic youtubers or podcasters do you see? Why does the female voice seem that bit quieter? Maybe it’s because the female audience express their fandom is more artistic less “look at me” ways, maybe it’s because this poll was wildly wrong. All we know is, what better group of people to discuss than a podcast of 5 men. *cough*
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WARNING: (Explicit Tag)
Personally I believe it is exactly because they tend to come from the more creative side of the fanbase. I mean, you don’t see too many videos of female fans bitching about how much Sonic 2006/Sonic Boom/Your Favorite Title Here sucks, typically you’ll see them making a well put together art piece or comic, voicing in a fan project, or just over all cosplaying better than any average male fan could ever hope of reaching. I’m not saying that none of them do a lot of the ranty attention grabbing that a lot of our male fans tend to do and there’s certainly plenty of room for them to do that in this big world of ours, but what I AM saying is that I wouldn’t be surprised if the reason their voice was so loud and attention grabbing in the community is because really they don’t care about trying to prove a point like most of us do, which is more of a self-centered kind of thing, they just care a bit more about trying to express their interest and love for the franchise in their own ways that doesn’t demand attention toward them but rather attention toward Sonic. But this is more based off of my personal experiences, and I only know so many Sonic fan friends in my life, let alone female ones.
You have no idea how much this relates to me! I was planning on starting a youtube channel, and I thought to myself “what if I get a girl to be an alternate voice in order to get attention” the basic idea would be that you clicked on the video, then you get a choice of what voice you hear, both voices say the same thing tho. And I thought that it was a good idea, but something kept telling me that there was something wrong with it but I couldn’t tell what! Now I know that naturally I was falling into a habit that would attract me to a girl and simutaneosly answered my question on why there are so many boy reviewers and not girls, and why girls tend to get MUCH more fanboyish that boys…I used to accuse people in my mind for that, but really I just never understood, and I jumped to conclusions…i’m already over that, but it gives good insight that I think both genders need to communicate more on the issue evenly! I notice that the genders tend to go their own ways, all this time the guys didn’t know the girls were around, and the girls just didn’t care! Good gosh this makes me feel dumb! what are your thoughts on all this?
I’m right there with you buddy.
It’s because, simply put, girls feel less of a need to puff themselves up by voicing their opinions so aggressively than boys. Naturally, girls aren’t the ones that need to appear big or tough to attract the opposite gender yet boys are so girls just don’t need to be aggressive. I think it probably also comes from the social stigma that surrounds people who are overly aggressive about opinions, especially with entertainment (videogames, TV shows etc.) and the fact girls, generally and naturally speaking, care more about their social status, appearance and generally fitting in than boys so their more careful about what they say in order to maintain said social status and their social group.
they’re more* Bleh, typo. :p
I’ll also mention I am female myself, I’ve been a Sonic fan for about 20 years and I do enjoy drawing, writing and I’m very interested in trying my hand at cosplay but I can be very vocal about my opinions too. I am also, however, very tomboyish so that would be an interesting bit of research to try. How many of the female fans are tomboys rather than girly girls yet still aren’t very vocal or are as vocal as the males?
Oh I’m also a collector and I enjoy every aspect of the franchise, from the games to the shows to the comics to the music and even the merch (aside from most of the plushes, I find them ugly for the most part).
There’s a ton of female fans on tumblr. I agree with both of you, most female fans express their interest by art and comics. All the fan sonic comics I see are mostly made by female fans. Overall, I think a lot of us like to avoid conflict and debates over sonic games with others. It just gets stressful.
Hero and kamifox make very good points; maybe it’s simply that the female fans are, in general, happy with their lot, and just like to make things 🙂
Or maybe they just don’t want to be seen as behaving like the Ultimate Sonic Fangirl, Amy Rose 😀
Haha! Oh God, poor Sonic if all his fans were like that!
“Haha, beat Eggman yet again!”
*rumbling in the distance*
“Huh? What the heck is that?”
*Sonic fangirls appear on the horizon*
“Oh, my sweet chilli dogs. HELP!”
*Sonic gets consumed by tons of fangirls*
Eggman: “Haha! My secret plan worked! You can never defeat me, hedgehog!”
Hello! I actually am a Sonic series fangirl, and Sonic is my favorite video game character. If I could make a video about how I feel about it, it would take maybe multiple videos, but sadly I don’t have the equipment right now. I’ve played nearly every Sonic game starting from Sonic the Hedgehog on up. If you want opinions on how I feel about any Sonic game or something to do with Sonic, just ask me anything! :3 I’m more part of the Sonic fans that actually like more of the older games better than the new ones and crazy about the music. Just know that female Sonic fans like me do exist and will always love the series.
(Btw, I love how you guys are using Casinopolis music in the background. Why? Because Sonic Adventure is my favorite Sonic game.)
I’m Not Sure How To Respond And/Or React To That. So I’m Just Sayin’ That I’m A Girl…
THEN MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD! We need a female representative! 😮
Ey, I’m female and I already commented. :p
I’m a female fan, but I guess I’m just not as content to shout my opinions as much since SEGA doesn’t seem to be listening to anyone anyway. I like the character designs; I think most of the characters have depth; and I want to see them treated better by SEGA and their writers. I played the Adventure series back in the day and read the comics up until the “Pendering,” and now I just watch as the franchise burns (it’s “burning” in my personal opinion, I realize that others may believe it is improving). I am a fan, just not a fan of the current direction, and I don’t think I’m alone in that. I think there are plenty of girls who call themselves fans who don’t participate in modern Sonic because of how far it has fallen from what first attracted us to the series. We just make our fan comics and fan characters and run amok in our own nostalgia for what the series once was.
Also a side point, but a notable one anyway: Shadow isn’t exactly a main character anymore and he tended to attract a lot of female audiences back in the early 2000’s. His withdrawal from the main series is likely correlated to the lack of female participation in the community.
“Shadow isn’t exactly a main character anymore and he tended to attract a lot of female audiences back in the early 2000’s. His withdrawal from the main series is likely correlated to the lack of female participation in the community.”
Because he was a James Bond wannabe. You give a familiar character guns and he’s insanely famous. What brings my hatred to this thing was that SEGA had this black rat topped their main mascot and made him beat up Sonic in his so called “badness, cool, and good-looking” game. Why make a character better than your main? Why embarrass Sonic over this immature nonsense? The only reason why Shadow’s game sold a lot was because kid’s parents won’t allow them to play mature shooting games. So, when they show a colorful walking hedgehog pumping guns, they freaked. And Shadow constantly running his mouth, I’m surprised the parents didn’t react.
Now, for this disturbing sonadow concept. Sonic is NOT gay. He’s not a cross-dresser. I can’t bare with it.
He was a cross-dresser in Underground though which, while widely considered non-canon, is technically partially official as SEGA had their own input to it.
I must morbidly disagree with you that Shadow is a poor character. Honestly he has more potential from my perspective, and he brought a ton of fun to the fandom in the form of Sonic vs. Shadow debates that SEGA would never answer. He was also a dynamic character whose personality notably changed over time (what you seem to hate most deeply was the post-SA2, pre-06 Shadow), which made him unique most of the classic characters (an argument can be made that Tails has been dynamic, but not to the same degree). I found the “edge” of his character to add a nice foil to the more basic, colorful cast of characters that already existed, and opened the series up to some interesting reinterpretations that I personally quite liked.
I completely respect your opinion however–I don’t want you to think I am attempting to be combative here. (Sonadow we can agree on however, yeesh that stuff gives me the creeps.) I can completely understand why many Sonic fans do not like Shadow, but I find his character very likeable and important to a significant portion of the “former/nostalgic” female fandom. His absence has definitely been a major reason for my withdrawal from the fandom. My involvement as of late has basically been limited to drawing Sonic original characters (OCs) in order to get used to using a tablet to draw, which is a very sad state of affairs compared to my level of devotion to this series in the early 2000s.
I would love nothing more than to see this fandom come alive again and have lots of female peers to discuss with. But alas, I do not foresee that with the current direction SEGA has been going.
I completely agree with you, Shadow and Silver are actually the two Sonic (game) characters with the most in-depth and fleshed-out stories and personalities. I mean, come on, there was two games completely centred around Shadows saga with a bit more in Heroes! There was plenty to work with!
I honestly want to see more Shadow but even more Silver since there’s so much yet to be discovered about his world, background (all we really know is he’s from a ruined future and wanted to save it) and what happened to him after the events of ’06 (was his world saved? Did it simply revert? Did it and Silver cease to exist? We might never know!).
My only complaint about Shadow is the fact he became a hero which, while that was his intended purpose to some degree, he was still changed to be a living weapon and he does still contain that evil alien side so being a hero doesn’t really suit him a whole lot. I’d prefer it if he went back to being a dark rival to Sonic, more like Scourge from the Archie comics, where he’s not a super villain anymore like he was in SA2 but he still has potential to turn evil if the moment suits him or join up with Sonic if not. Just, for the love of God, don’t make him like he was in Sonic Boom: RoL…
Couldn’t have said it better myself. We need a really great writer in charge of upcoming Sonic games to flesh out some serious, hard lore in the universe and give us the great characters we’ve been craving!
“Just, for the love of God, don’t make him like he was in Sonic Boom: RoL…”
And yes… so much yes there. What even was that? The world may never know…
Not sure now much more I can make my voice heard beyond writing and drawing the official Sonic comics– I’m not the only woman who’s working on them either. Keep in mind where media comes from, yeah?
“Keep in mind where media comes from, yeah?”
I’m not sure what you’re getting at here (call me obtuse if you like), but… as someone who has followed you for a number of years now (moreso in your fan comic than official), I would be very interested to hear. I love your writing and art, and I am glad you take the time to do it; I truly wish there were more female fans like you who were both able and willing to produce such works.
I am an artist actualy xD and a collector so thats where i stand as a girl in the sonic fanbase, as a lot of people have said before it seems like the females are a lot more likely to make creative material such as art and cosplay, also a lot of female fans tend to be ignored if they draw anything pairing related and i know for a fact that a lot of female fans are normaly into stuff like that, so it’s not that they don’t have a loud voice in the fanbase, just no one notices them because of those reasons. xD
I just want to say that i’m not surprised about the whole female thing, I’m actually a part of a sonic the hedgehog group on facebook with over 15,000 people in it, and like 70% of the posts there are girls posting about their favorite sonic ships, especially sonadow and sonamy , sometimes they even argue a lot about their ships and they get so critical lately they are making rules for shipping posts. another big percentage of the posts are posts about how cute or even sexy a certain character looks like (mostly sonic or shadow) they usually posting a cutely drawn version of their character and just write something like “OMG HE IS SO ADORABLE EEEEP! *spams heart eyes emogies*”, I even remember lately seeing one of those with a picture taken from sonic boom of sonic lying unconsciously on the ground, they do the same thing to point out how sexy the character looks, and the comment section is usually agreeing with this posts, they all go “OMG IKR?” I sew people spamming a meme of sonic making a pose from the cruise ship episode of sonic X and a text that says “he’s maybe a hedgehog, but god dang is he sexy!” they sometimes posts other related meme’s to that subject. I usually try to keep away from those posts, but they are so darn everywhere that it’s hard to miss them, so yeah, I agree about what you said in the pod cast , most girls in the fandom don’t talk much about the games, they usually more interested in sonic for he’s design and character and likes to use him as inspiration to create art usually to show how cute he looks or even how he is…you know…but they can also make cool arts too that show sonic in a cool way and not just drawing, anyways the female fan base can be a lot different from the male part most of time, at least from my perspective so like I said i’m not really surprised this is a thing.
why are you torturing yourself to a facebook group like this
Er, I’m a girl XD I’m also a creative artist type. Make of that what you will!
This is going to be the most awkward thing I’m going to say.
Welcome to the party ladies! Any of you single?
I’m a fan girl since I was 8 (I’m now 16). I’m a reserved person, I tend more to keep my thoughts and my impressions for me instead doing a podcast… But anyway, I just love Sonic!! Girls of my age are like “love, boys, hang-out with friends, etc” and I’m like “Soniiiic!!!” XD
Exactly! XD
That reminds me of the time me and my friend ran down the high school hallways on our way to lunch yelling “Gotta go fast!” And “You’re too slow!” While Dodging a bunch of staring people! We cackled like idiots after that.
I don’t anyone will ever forgot those two girls screaming down the hallway. XD
It’s interesting because I’m a female Sonic fan and yes I do more art and comics than anything, but I’m also starting a gaming show. But like how other people have been saying about girls not forcing their opinions out there, my show is going to be mostly educational and not much of my opinions. I know I’m only one person but hey, this is interesting to me.
lol
As you can tell, a heavily researched subject. lol
I am a girl Sonic fan to and yeah i do most art but i got a youtube channel whit some sonic Stuff but i admit that i have gotten tired of SEGA’s bad treatment to the Sonic series as of late. Haven’t gotten a main Sonic game since Generation. My fave to draw is Rouge the Bat! I like bats and she is the only bat in the series so far and i like to draw her since she have mote curves than the others!
There now i have shown some opinion on something! Not so good at stuff like this since i am just happy to but up a pic ore two to show what i like! :3
This is such a weird thing to be even the least bit surprised about. I’ve always been a sonic nerd. Also; I’ve never ever been the only girl in the community, and I’ve never felt “special” in any way, just at home with my fandom. This focus on feeeeemales is actually making me feel a bit uneasy, do people honestly think there is such a big difference between fanboys and fangirls? I mean sure, I admit I’m definitely the artist type, but as a nerd I’ve only stuck to canon and never felt the need to slash the characters, for example. I don’t really mind people doing that, but for pete’s sake people… You DO all realize everybody’s grown up with the same hero focus in popular media…? Like, do people honestly reckon every girl automatically must yearn for the male lead romantically in order to enjoy a nice action flick, or a game for that matter?
Or maybe, just maybe, we just… read ourselves into the main lead just like any other person does?
When it comes to creativity; I did a couple of chapters for Ian Flynn’s fan comic Other-M (as well as heaps of fanart) when I was a teenager and also joined a couple of fan projects. But when it comes to my involvement with the fandom these days, I mainly read the comics, keep up with the cartoons, and every now and then I even buy some of the games. Oh, and lurk TSS and TSSZ of course. I keep myself updated what’s going on, and like so many other 80’s peeps, prefer classic Sonic. Hardly anything earth-shattering or unusual.
And, you know, we’ve always been right here.
I myself am a female sonic fan and I tend to express the fandom through fanfiction. I have watched all the TVshows, seen playthrough a of most of the games and played a few as well. I agree with that the female fan base tend to use more creative ways to express themselves