Commentary
for June 6, 2022:
Back when I first
created Sora-Ya,
Farscape was on television and
I was a huge fan of that series (hell, I still am), and I was
particularly fond of the character Scorpius, one of the show’s
principle antagonists. One of the interesting quirks about Scorpius
was that it was impossible to lie to him, as he could sense when
people were being dishonest. I took that characteristic and gave it
to Sora-Ya in the original Sonic fanfic I wrote back in 2001
(which eventually became the first four chapters of this very
series), where she made her debut, and it carried over into Eon’s
Comic as well. But at some point, I allowed it to quietly fade
out of the canon back then, because I grew to dislike the idea of
being unable to ever lie to Sora-Ya. As a result, telepathic lie
detection has never been part of Sora-Ya’s character in Eon’s
World, in fact she has no special powers whatsoever; at best,
she’s a
badass normal.
And I think it was around the time of this scene in the original
story that I began to dislike that special power. In the original,
Sora-Ya wanted to know where the Chaos Emeralds were and Tails had
to cleverly word her
answer to mislead Sora-Ya without lying, a bit like beating D&D’s
Zone of Truth spell. But if
someone’s special power is sensing deception, wouldn’t a truthful
but misleading answer still trigger that sense? I think it would and
I think I realised that even back in 2003, which is probably why I
quietly swept that ability under the rug.
But I still wanted a scene with Sora-Ya questioning Tails, so here
it is. Now, I’ve probably mentioned this before, but in Eon’s
Comic, I very much cast Sora-Ya as a religious zealot, who
basically wanted to conquer the world and force everyone to live
under her religion. She represented what I feared at the time, which
was religious fundamentalism coming into power and oppressing those
who did not conform to its ideology. And you know what? I don’t
think I did a bad job of writing Sora-Ya as that back then and I had
a hell of a lot of fun doing it. But it made her incredibly one
dimensional, which is why for Eon’s World, I’ve dramatically
toned down the religious angle of the Echidna Empire to the point
that it’s almost purely a background element, and instead brought
the idea of freeing Mobians from human tyranny to the fore. And so,
in situations like this, Sora-Ya will make this kind of sales pitch,
an attempt to recruit a potential ally to her cause, or at the very
least plant the seeds of doubt in their mind. Now, the question you
may well ask here is whether or not Sora-Ya is sincere. Tails
obviously doesn’t think so. But whatever’s going on in Sora-Ya’s
mind, I think I will keep there; it’s sometimes more interesting if
you don’t know these things, after all.
Anyway, I’m really rather pleased with the 3D model of the brig I
threw together for this page. You can’t see it here, but it’s a
hexagonal room with five cells arranged around a guard post in the
centre, a little bit like a panopticon. It’s a shame that I’ve only
just started mixing sprites and 3D models to this degree, honestly,
because there are several previous chapters where a setup like this
would have been ideal. Ah well, it’s an investment for future
stories, where this will also be useful. |
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