BOOTLEG BLOG

Why Tails is so important for outcast kids.

(This page may be edited in the future, maybe to make everything more focused, to fix typos, etc)

If you were a Sonic fan in the 2000s and 2010s then odds are you probably weren't the coolest kid in town.
The Sonic franchise was in the "cool thing to hate" rotation at the time, but that's a conversation for another time.
But even then, the Sonic franchise simply attracted a lot of weird kids, I have my personal many speculations as to why, but this page of course has one focus in particular.

Miles Prower

Tails has one of the most distinct backstories. He was born with a mutation that caused him to have an extra tail, thus he got heavily bullied for it, making him very isolated. Of course, until Sonic came into his life.
Sonic's confidence and speed inspired him and thus Tails went under his wing, Sonic both gave him his nickname and directly or indirectly showed Tails he could fly with his 2 tails.
He's a child prodigy, a mechanic at just 6 years old, he's easily one of the most intelligent characters in the franchise, being about at the same level as Eggman, only thing holding his intellect back is the simple fact that he's just a child, making him also one of the weakest.
He's the underdog, the Luigi to Sonic's Mario, but I think there's more than that, and why I feel like Tails and characters like him are so important for weird and outcast kids to see.

I got to fly higher!

Adventure 1 is extremely important for Tails as it's when Tails starts becoming a more independent character from Sonic.
Tails and Amy end up getting seperated from Sonic, Tails finds Eggman crashed and overhears his last minute plan to straight up nuke Station Square. Thankfully the nuke doesn't go off and now Eggman has to go after it, Tails having no choice but to follow behind.

"But... if I don't make it in time, this city will go up in smoke...! So-Sonic...
I changed thanks to my encounter with Sonic... But I can't just keep running behind him. I'm going to have to run with just my own strength someday...!

Adventure 1 in general plants the seeds of very prominent traits in our main characters. Sonic's free spirit and his moral code of wanting freedom for all, Knuckles deep connection to his ancestors and his isolation, Amy's deeply caring spirit and need to help others no matter the cost.
And of course, Tails's journey into growing up.

Tails plays an even more major role through Adventure 2, breaking Sonic out of prison and helping track down Eggman. But of course, he isn't perfect.
Tails has set up his plan, use his fake chaos emerald to absorb the power of the real chaos emeralds and then self destruct. Giving it to Sonic in hopes to sneak it in with the other chaos emeralds to stop Eggman's beam of death from hitting earth.
But unfortunately, Eggman catches on quickly and uses Tails's naivety to his advantage.

"No way! How'd you know it's fake?!"
"Hmph, because you just told me!"

For as far as Tails knows, he doomed Sonic. His hero, his older brother. And yet...

"Sonic asked... This is the first time that Sonic asked me to handle things for him!That's why I'm not... I'm not running away!"

Despite it all, he has to keep fighting on, for Sonic, for everyone. Sonic taught him that. I feel like SA2 is one of the franchises best charaterizations of Tails, but of course like most characters in the franchise, the said characterization took a sharp nosedive at somepoint.

I made a TV out of paperclips.

Let's rip the bandaid off and talk about Colors and Lost World. The problems with Tails in these games is that he was written with only 1 word in mind: "smart."
This goes for every character in Colors, Lost World, hell even in Generations to some extent. Everyone feels extremely flat and mellowed down.
Even as a kid I could tell there was something weird about how Tails was written in Colors. He doesn't feel smart he feels like the writers looked up more complicated versions of common words and slapped them in a sentence.

The particular problem I have about Lost World is that it has some concepts I actually kinda like, Tails is very irritable.
I really like the idea of Tails starting to grow some anger problems as he grows up, he's still maturing afterall, but of course it is handled not very well.
Though I can't really blame Tails for being whiny with Sonic, this game probably has my least favorite characterization of Sonic in the franchise, he is extremely punchable.
I like Tails being stubborn on paper, but in practice here, it just becomes annoying very quickly

Sega saw the problem people had with these nothing burger stories they were doing so they decided "yup, it's time to turn serious again!"
They did it a tiny bit in Lost World, I honestly keep forgetting that Amy and Knuckles straight up momentarily die, but they needed to return to their roots.
Oh god I have to talk about Forces now.

The part where I complain about Forces

I am not quiet about my hatred of Forces, I am quite prone to getting completely sidetracked to rant about Forces.
Hell I frequently joke with my friends how the singular thing I like about Forces is how the plot was basically started because Shadow killed a whole squad of troops and called Infinite a bitch then left.

I have a lot to complain about but focus, the focus is on Tails. Hearing the line "Tails has lost it." I thought, like many, he was gonna be pissed.
My boy, my baby boy who defeated Chaos 4 without any problems, is now cowering in fear of CHAOS 0! I don't think I need to explain the problem here.
Guess what other game Tails was able to stand on his own even when Sonic is assumed dead? SONIC ADVENTURE 2. Hell even fucking 06 he doesn't, to be fair he's also borderline a background character in 06 but my point still stands.

So, with all that on the table, how do they fix this? They can't just retcon the past couple games, they have to confront it.

Fly to new horizons, find another passage.

When Frontiers came out it felt like the entire Sonic fandom huddled around into a circle intensely watching during the entirety of the Chaos Island section of the game with bated breath to see what they'll do about Tails.
Everyone already knows that Ian Flynn can write a good Tails, he's great in the IDW comics, but the true question was if they were gonna acknowledge Forces? They've been mentioning a lot of information that hasn't been touched for awhile but will they be able to bring up Forces?
Well guess what they did! And because Ian Flynn is a god they somehow made it work! It quite a simple way infact.

"It's ok if you still need help sometimes, that's just part of growing up."

First, Tails actually feels smart! There's a joke about him using complicated words in the first cutscene he's in but again it's both played off as a joke rather than normal and it doesn't feel nearly as obnoxious "look how smart this character is" like in Colors or Lost World.
Second, it reframes Tails panic as a one time slip up as apposed to something consistent with his typical behavior, implying Tails has been feeling extremely insecure for awhile, it just reached a boiling point and he panicked. He's just a kid afterall.

"And I'm proud of you, don't forget that."
"I won't"

Relapsing on your progress doesn't make your progress any less valuable.
Now that I have everything on the table, I should explain the title shouldn't I?

Why Tails specifically?

I'm not the first person that has pointed out that the Sonic franchise attracts outcasts.
Reminder that I mean "outcasts" as a neutral term, not like cringe fodder "LOOK AT THIS WEEEEIRD DEVIANTART POST"
There is a particular pattern I began to pick up on while interacting with the modern Sonic fandom (at least on Tumblr). The large amount of people who were depressed kids that related to Tails. I was one of them.

People who are mentally ill, neurodivergent, disabled, LGBTQ+, people who were one reason or another were outcasted by others around them as a child almost always deeply love Tails. That or Shadow but he's getting his own page.
It's pretty simple to understand why, character who was bullied and outcasted for something they can't control is loved by people who dealt with the same, but I feel like it goes deeper than that.

Sonic as a franchise in my opinion is one of the few pieces of kids media in the 2000s and 2010s where it's "be yourself no matter what others think!" message actually feels genuine. I have a hard time explaining specifics but I can't help but feel like most kid media when giving that message proceeds to go "be true to yourself! unless you're like this, then you're just a joke!"
I wish I could find a good example of this but it's something I noticed a lot as a kid. I think the immediate show that pops up in my head with that problem is Icarly, I'll update this section if I can find a good example but until then you'll just have to take my word for it.

I feel like Tails is so incredibly important because I'm a firm believer that kids need to be able to see themselves in their entertainment. Children who get bullied and isolated for aspects of themselves they can't control need to feel seen. In a world where parents instinct is to try to force the outcast child to change rather than teaching the bully to not bully, it's something children desperately need.
I was bullied a tiny bit when I was briefly in public school, a majority of bullying I experienced while growing up was cyberbullying, and genuinely I feel like Tails and other characters of the Sonic cast kept me from forcing myself to behave in a way I wasn't as a child.

In particular, I think Tails is incredibly important for kids who were told they were either gifted or prodigies or something similar, children who didn't get to be children because their supposed higher intelligence makes them more 'mature.'
That's why I so consistently point out Tails behaving like a child as a positive, there's so many children, particularly in my generation, who grew up not being allowed to be children because their parents were convinced they were 'destined for greatness' and were 'so mature for their age' just for them to grow up struggling to form new skills because they've been injected with perfectionism and have been indirectly taught that if they're not good at something immediately they never will be.

I love Tails, he's one of my favorite characters, I had to cut out a whole section about Sonic X because it just didn't fit with the point I was trying to get across.
I think we need more characters like Tails, and I feel like we have been, kids need to be able to see themselves, and people are starting to realize that.

That's why Tails is so important, he's here to remind children they're not alone.
That's what I think at least.

gameover header by @strangergraphics-archive on Tumblr