Sonic the headcanon is the name I've given to a multi-year long writing project I set for myself, basically starting around early 2017. The idea is to unify the stories of the video games as much as possible, by resolving lore differences and providing some extra narrative throughlines.
Why am I doing this? Well, because to some degree I believe the concept of originality is overrated and fundamentally deceitful. Every idea we have stands upon the shoulders of giants, our thinking indelibly influenced by the world around us. A story concept is only as original as the ideas it borrows are obscure. I'm dropping all pretense and sticking just a bit closer to the source of my writing inspiration. Plus, it's fun.
I know, however, that the lore will move forward regardless of me, and is currently doing so. I want you to understand that a unified canon for the games was a more compelling idea in early 2017; nowadays we have more statements than ever about what is and isn't, arbitrary powerscaling from a localization figurehead, retcons of retcons from the head of Sonic Team, one minute a game is declared non-canon and the next it's not; the proverbial God and St Peter just piping up all the time. You can tell how happy wannabe Dante over here is about all this.
Apart from how uncertain all the retconning makes me of puting stock in new lore, there's always gonna be a selfish part of me that doesn't want my subjective vision for the series contradicted by someone else's subjective vision, just that they are steering the ship and not me. You're hearing me say I miss 2017, when the series was in a significantly worse state, just because the Meta Era's lack of lore is preferable to me than the monkey wrenches inserted by new lore. You hear me cope my way out of acknowledging hard canon statements. But let me just put it this way:
I poured hours into this, and for a time, it was an accurate representation of the lore, with little in the way of compromises and rewrites. I fully expect (intellectually, if not internally) for it to fit less and less with the changing state of the lore... but lore is a friggen' mushy thing, you understand? All this is made up, of course, but the way it can change, man... I aimed to incorporate every piece of the lore (as if this would make me any more valid than the people who draw the line at any lore post-Adventure, or who ignore certain games as non-canon, or whatever arbitrary schism) - now I find myself arbitrarily asking you to ignore whatever changes contradict this fanfic moving forward.
You were probably gonna do that anyway, it's fanfic. Whatever, of course I'm gonna take it to seriously, look around you.
With time, I would like this wiki to be a resource to succinctly communicate my ideas, hopefully alongside more fleshed out written, visual and possibly multimedia narratives within the framework I built. There're a lot more stories I want to tell beyond worldbuilding and theorycrafting, but hopefully this can make a good launching point for understanding my interpretation of the Sonic World.
The rules I set myself for this project are as follows:
Adaptations are not considered. This doesn't mean your favourite comic characters have no chance to appear (I mean, there's Charmy right there), but history and worldbuilding from these differing visions for the Sonic universe do not apply.
Even with this limitation, it is extremely difficult to resolve all the lore from the games, and I have thrown out frameworks for my fanon before to avoid contradicting any games, at least major ones. Whether I'll be able to stick to this moving forward (or honestly even now with Frontiers), only time will tell. I do, after all, have my own preferences for the series, despite trying to accept and incorporate it in its tonally dissonant totality.
More on the my thought process here.
I find this the most intuitive way to structure things. Yes, that includes Sonic CD, releasing in the middle of the Death Egg Saga.
More on my fanon timeline here.
I'm not afraid to be cringe; that ship arguably sailed long ago. But I'm still averse to inventing characters with major plot importance, at least with the intention of 'fixing' something in the series. OCs may still be there for flavour, but any of importance are usually expies from extra media or popular fanon so as not to be entirely out of left field.
More on what an expy is, and a list of my OCs here.
Pages may have all or some of the following divisions, depending on what is relevant to the subject of the page:
Body text and citations are seperated into Canon and Fanon sections respectively. This is so anyone new to the series can get oriented and not mistake fanon for fact. Citations are similarly divided into canon sources with numbered endnotes 1 and looser inspirations with lettered endnotesa.
Note that I'm just a nerd, not an authority, so if I haven't inserted a link for a source (beyond, say a placeholder, like I sometimes leave around), I was confident it was correct, but not certain. I'm not promising to always do the greatest due dilligence with my research either; if the Fandom page is spreading misinfo, well, I'd like to imagine I would check their citations, but that could be a lot of work, so it may not be done immediately. I also can't guarantee external links will stay up or remain accurate, obviously.
'My Read' sections tend to tackle very subjective topics, or topics with incomplete info, where I either believe my interpretation is a good as any, or that there a reasonable inferences to be drawn beyond wild theory-crafting. This may involve characterisation, guessing at author intention, etc... this is so I can delineate stuff I'd actually be willing to ague is 'soft canon' though not directly confirmed, as opposed to the house-of-cards fanon connecting wildly disparate parts of the canon that makes up most of this wiki, or the things I just made up for the hell of it.
These also help the reader get an idea of where I'm coming from in terms of my opinions on the series, and hint at what directions I might take if I ever publish more traditional narratives.
"But What about-" are slightly snarky sections where I explain why I may dismiss some objection I've foreseen to my fanon or reads. I tend to avoid overly controversial discourse, so don't worry, I won't go off on polemics; but, it will of course still be my monologue, so it's bound to be one-sided. I just hope it'll make some of my choices more understandable.
Spoiler text (example, mouse over to read) is built upon haughty presumption that the content of this wiki may ever find itself relevant to a proper narrative adaptation, like a fan comic. In any case, spoilered text will contain significant twists, things that recontextualise and colour a lot of other parts of fanon. They're more risky because of that, in terms of being contradicted by official lore adjustments. You may do well to ignore them, IDK. But there they are, my bolder ideas; I wear them on my sleeve like everything else here.
Also, y'know, I don't wanna spoil some games, either.
And finally, this project is primarily for my own satisfaction. If you don't get much out of other's fantheories, we're actually very alike! I tend to avoid letting my theories be coloured too much by other people's headcanons, at least the more detailed fanon that is personal and not a widespread, inarticulate idea (like the Metal is future roboticized Sonic "'"theory"'"). So with this, I'm in a weird position of publishing something not even I would want to consume, if I wasn't, y'know, me. Whatever, art is for the artist, take this or leave it, I just want it to be out there. Even if I can't 'fix' Sonic, I had fun writing this, and I hope you maybe find some inspiration, and not a new fanmade series bible to be dissatisfied over when no fan or official content follows it. That's what I'm at least trying to do myself; not be too dissatisfied I mean. 'Cause Sonic doesn't belong to any of us... It belongs to a faceless corporation and ever changing creative teams LMAO get bent, art commercialized into a neverending franchise is bound to mutate, corrupt, and end creatively bankrupt without true identity or essence!
With that said, the best way to see what all this is all about is to select a random page and get reading, but until I add that functionality, you're better off returning to Home and selecting one of the categories from there, since they contain links to the most complete articles.