when you type or say the word “Maria”, is that a tf trigger?
@aescling No, who is Maria in this context? 
@vaporeon_ @aescling my guess is the Maria from sonic adventure 2
@vaporeon_ in the Sonic series, a formative memory Shadow the Hedgehog retains is the death of his only friend, the human girl Maria, at the hands of GUN (yes, a military org called GUN is a thing in this series). he never got over it
@vaporeon_ if you die as Shadow in SA2 or Sonic Heroes, he says “Maria…” as he goes down
@vaporeon_ “never got over it” is unfair to shadow’s character; he starts developing at the end of Shadow the Hedgehog (the game) and is pretty interesting in new ways in Sonic 06, but the series has since dropped those developments, which i am pretty sad about
@aescling Does he take revenge on the military for it?
@vaporeon_ sadly, no, the series is a little too conservative to do something like that
@vaporeon_ @aescling lol no instead he goes to work for them
(which is largely his "getting over it", he learns to accept that what GUN did wasn't intentional, and the best way to honor Maria's memory is to show forgiveness to that organization)
@The_T @vaporeon_ i like it as a character arc but i will fully admit it is a rather conservative framing of the issue
@aescling @vaporeon_ totally. Shadow is a boomer anyway.
@aescling @vaporeon_ (I mean this in the literal sense. Sorta like Captain America, Shadow has been frozen for 50 years and is literally "from" 50 years ago. They don't ever delve into stuff like that because politics rarely come up in A. children's media and especially B. children's media created in Japan, but
It doesn't not fit
@aescling @vaporeon_ So how does he solve a problem like Maria?
@aschmitz @vaporeon_ he kinda just goes “that’s it, from now on, i’m putting my past behind me” at the end of shadow the hedgehog with no clear setup fur the development
@vaporeon_ @aschmitz shadow the hedgehog is a video game
*typos [sic] the word Maria exactly once*