When am I going to get my obligatory Sonic Learns to Swim scene? I mean, the kid almost drowned, so I would hope the next movie takes care of that, because the idea lives rent free in my head.
It should be a really cute moment too, right? The idea of his parents teaching him how to swim while his two new brothers cheer in the background. It sounds super sweet and wholesome, doesn’t it?
WRONG.
That shit is going to be like watching a Roman Gladiator battle and it nothing short of chaos incarnate as Tom paddles violently in the water, holding onto Sonic’s legs as Sonic holds onto the dock with every last shred of strength in his body.
“BETRAYAL,” he screeches, as Knuckles pries his fingers off of the dock. “I SAVE YOU, AND THIS IS YOUR PAYMENT.”
“This is for your own good, brother,” Knuckles says solemnly.
“SONIC WE’RE IN THE SHALLOW PART,” Tom screams over Tails wailing in the background about how his new big brother is being murdered. “LET GO!”
“MY OWN FATHER HATH FORSAKEN ME,” sobs Sonic. “HOW COULD YOU DO THIS!”
“Sonic just let- DID YOU JUST LICK ME?”
Maddie eventually needs to jump in to wrench him off. But that’s a whole other issue in itself, which ends in Maddie holding a flailing, sparking child above the water, screaming at the top of her lungs about how “MOMMY WON’T LET YOU DIE BUT I SWEAR TO GOD SONIC IF YOU ELECTROCUTE ME YOU’RE GROUNDED FOR A YEAR.”
“TELL HIM, MADDIE,” shouts Tom.
Meanwhile, Tails finally gains enough bravery to grab at a floating toy off the dock. “FOR SONIIIIIIIIC,” he screeches between his tears, before beating Tom across the head with a pool noodle.
This is my dream. No I don’t take criticism.
The mental image of Sonic clinging to Maddie for dear life and just going “ma. Ma. MA I DIDN’T GIVE UP THE POWER OF A GOLDEN GOD JUST TO END UP HERE”*points to the innocent looking pool toy* “it’s gonna pop the second i move AND THEN IM DONE FOR.” They see he sorta has a point (HA!), so they bundle him up in one of those heavy duty life jackets instead. But it’s the one used for toddlers where he’s floating on his back and has pictures of frogs printed on it.
Knuckles can swim just fine and likes to race Donudad and Momaddie all the time. He’s trying to teach Ozzie to swim underwater for long periods of time. The races are one of the only ways to get Sonic in the water cause then he just runs across and if he’s feeling confident he’ll let himself lose momentum and float back up with his life jacket. Knuckles likes sitting at the bottom of the lake and he eventually gets Tails into doing it by make it a whole contest to see who can float back up the slowest and hold their breath the longest.
Honestly, this is also a nuance to Knuckles and Rouge’s rivalry that I feel like often gets overlooked because Rouge is selfish. Is, in fact, highlyandunapologetically selfish. And this isn’t just an incidental character flaw that drives bad behavior, but, actually, the keystone to some of her better qualities as well.
In adventure 2, a lot of Rouge’s plot boils down to that she’s disloyal to just about everybody. She’s backstabbing Eggman and Shadow on GUN’s orders, and later she also chides GUN that they better remember to pay her. The second Shadow saves her life on Prison Island, her very next scene is starting to grill him. She’s begun caring about him because he proved the ability to care about her, and even then, it’s a very slow process that this caring pupates into what we see at the end of Heroes, that Rouge decides whether or not this is the real Shadow or a duplicate android who just hasn’t realized it yet, she’s going to stick with this guy and try to protect him.
Rouge is selfish, and this is essential in a context where GUN does not have clean hands, where Eggman is dangerous but you may need to harvest information from him, where she doesn’t really interface closely with straitlaced heroes like Sonic. She’s going to be selfish as a form of defense. She’s going to grab her things, and all the people she cares about, and make sure they’re okay, and to hell with anyone or anything else. Rouge is “what’s in it for me” and that’s not just a rough spot to be smoothed out, it’s a survival tactic to the world she lives in. In 06 we outright have her chiding Shadow that they shouldn’t trust GUN and hand over the scepter of darkness without knowing what it is or why BOTH GUN and Eggman want it.
This is, I don’t want to say, a good thing for Knuckles to experience in its entirety, because Knuckles’ loyalty is also not a character flaw- if you’ve built a rapport of trust with Knuckles he does not sell that out easily. He’s the last survivor of a lost culture- loyalty to their memory is really all he has. But also, the fact that Eggman can keep milking their ultimately ended-in-betrayal allegiance from Sonic 3&K drives home how dangerously easy it is for Knuckles to get stuck in things.
Sonic and Rouge are different kinds of foils to Knuckles and they both challenge him in different ways. Sonic, leaning more to the freedom than responsibility side of the axis, tugs him in the direction of, “but are you happy? are you enjoying yourself? did you get to experience everything you wanted to?” from a relatively safe perspective of at the end of the day, both Sonic and Knuckles are pretty straightforward heroes. Knuckles can, on a level, trust Sonic’s priorities will align with his own, that he can explain about his culture and Sonic will get it. Hell, that Sonic might even give up some of his own freedom and agree to watch the Master Emerald for a day so Knuckles can take a break.
Rouge, meanwhile, is a bit of a steeper challenge, in like, “that’s great, but what have your ancestors done for you lately? You have all this power and resources and what are you doing with it? Are you willing to be actually selfish and let something you want challenge the big grand plan?”
