What You See is What You Get: Sonic the Hedgehog, Daisy Buchanan, and the Fragile Nature of Persona and Identity

Pixels and Parenthood: How Gaming Shaped My Childhood

Growing up, I spent most of my time with a controller in my hands and a TV screen a foot away from my face. Whether it was a Wii remote, a PlayStation controller (before it was called DualShock kids!), or an Xbox controller, I was always engulfed in the medium of gaming. My childhood was shaped this way due to my dad being substantially more present and involved in my life growing up. It was inevitable. My dad was (still is) a huge advocate for gaming; he loved anything related to nerd and geek culture. Much to my mother’s dismay, her daughter was a tomboy because of dad. Instead of Barbies, princess dolls, and playing dress up, I was much more interested in playing with videogames instead. I loved spending my days as a kid with Mario, Link, and Sonic the Hedgehog; I still do actually, and I am not ashamed to admit it!

The Dark Age: Sonic’s Lost Momentum in the 2010s

Although…my interest and enjoyment of Sonic in the 2010s rightfully waned. I would not enjoy it again until the 2020s. What happened in the 2010s you ask? Nothing good. The Sonic franchise was a dumpster fire, and Sonic Team just kept adding fuel to the fire because they’d rather go down with the sinking ship since their funding was dramatically reduced by SEGA during that time. I blame it on the failures that were Sonic Lost World [2013] and Sonic Boom [2014]. For some reason, Sonic Team could not keep the momentum they created from 2011’s Sonic Generations. I still continued to check in every once in a while to see how the blue blur was doing out of nostalgia and foolish hope. As YouTuber Alpharad said while playing Sonic Forces (a horribly received game by the way) back in 2017, “It’s like a car crash, y’know? Like when you see one, you can’t look away even though you know it’s horrible.”

The Sonic Renaissance: Sonic’s Roaring 20s

So what happened to make me hop back into the series in the 2020s? It all started with the success of Paramount’s movie adaptation and interpretation of Sonic the Hedgehog back in 2020. Yeah, that movie—the one with the now-iconic “Ugly Sonic” redesign that forced Paramount to halt the film’s release to properly redesign him. Heck, Disney even poked fun at that in Chip and Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022). As much as I’d love to talk about “Ugly Sonic” and how it caused one of the only instances (that I can think of) where the internet successfully bullied a massive media and entertainment company into delaying a major film, this would turn into a full-fledged scholarly essay about how protesting actually works rather than a fun blog post about Sonic and Daisy Buchanan.

Point is: Paramount reviving Sonic by kickstarting the first-ever successful movie gaming trilogy back in 2020 is what drew me back to a series that heavily defined my childhood. I am now unashamedly enjoying Sonic as an adult. You can bet I saw Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (2024) on its debut day! I was actually more excited for that film releasing in my graduation year rather than my actual graduation.

A Hedgehog Without Origin: Sonic’s Elusive and Ambiguous Identity

With the revival of Sonic in my personal life, I inevitably retaught myself lore that I had forgotten due to the long passage of time. While revisiting the franchise, I realized something strange. I know a lot about Sonic’s universe, but I don’t know much about Sonic himself. That’s not entirely my fault; there actually isn’t a lot to know about him on his own. Sonic doesn’t have a canon backstory (at least not one that’s stuck). His identity isn’t grounded in origin; he only exists through his adventures and what he’s perceived as.

I watched a video by YouTuber ALtheBoi titled “Leitmotifs in Sonic” awhile back that supports my assertion. If you are not familiar with leitmotifs, they are a recurrent theme that is associated with a certain character, object, setting, or event. Leitmotifs are found in all forms of media, not just Sonic. They’re a unique tool used by composers to establish identity, emotion, and continuity without relying on visuals or dialogue. Isn’t that cool? Anyways, in Sonic’s case, he actually doesn’t have a traditional leitmotif. By traditional, I mean that his “theme” is not consistent at all compared to one of his most notable competitors, Mario. Everyone is familiar with Mario’s theme. Once you hear it, your mind instantly pictures the famous Italian plumber. But with Sonic? He doesn’t really have that. Why? 

Sonic, despite being the face of the franchise, rarely has a clear, consistent leitmotif compared to other characters in the series like Shadow or Metal Sonic. The absence of an official leitmotif reflects Sonic’s ambiguity as a character. He’s less about who he is and more about what he is doing. He’s speed, he’s freedom, he’s action, and he’s a hero. That’s his identity, nothing more. ALtheBoi notes how Eggman, Sonic’s main antagonist, has a consistent leitmotif across the franchise regardless of what he’s doing while Sonic doesn’t. A commenter on the video offers a possible explanation saying, “Maybe it’s a reference to how Sonic is always moving and changing and becoming better than before while Eggman just stays the same.” So…what can we take away from that? ALtheBoi says that Sonic does not possess a single defining leitmotif because no one theme represents Sonic. He’s built different. More specifically, he’s built by the adventures he goes on. ALtheBoi proposes that perhaps the main themes of the games are supposed to represent Sonic and the adventure he embarks on in said game. 

Here are the examples ALtheBoi provides:

“Knight of the Wind” by Crush 40 — Sonic’s stoicism and how it ties to his journey to understanding and challenging the codes of chivalry.

“It Doesn’t Matter” by Tony Harnell— Sonic’s philosophy on everything: he’ll never give up, he’ll never back down from a fight, and that it doesn’t matter who is wrong or who is right because he will always keep running until the end.

“Sonic Heroes” by Crush 40 — The bonds of friendship and camaraderie Sonic has made throughout life that he values dearly.

So what is Sonic’s theme? All of them.

ALtheBoi says this is evidence of Sonic being a well-done static character in the context of gaming, but what about in the context as a character in a story? It appears that Sonic has a lack of fixed internal self. He’s a symbol, a brand, and a hero that exhibits the projections of the people he is saving rather than a character with emotional depth or personal history.

Just a Guy Who Loves Adventure: The Illusion of Simplicity

There’s this one iconic line that Sonic says in Sonic Adventure 2 while conversing with Shadow before their famous iconic rival battle.

 Shadow asks, “What are you?”

Sonic replies, “What you see is what you get! Just a guy that loves adventure!”

As a kid, Sonic just seemed really cool to me when he said that. He’s so free-spirited, confident, and defiant. I remember thinking that I wanted to be carefree like that. However, as an adult with media literacy skills, it just seems kind of…empty and deflective. Sonic defines himself by what others view him as. No depth, no history, no room for questioning, he is just Sonic: the guy who loves adventure—that is what he is and all he is. He accepts and embraces it. It can be seen as liberating, but if we take a closer look, something more fragile lies beneath that bold declaration. Sonic didn’t actually answer Shadow’s existential question. He doesn’t say who he is; he says what he appears to be. His identity is grounded in what he is perceived as by others which shows through his response and his leitmotif mobility. He is quite literally “just a guy who loves adventure.” Very simple and easy to digest.

And that, oddly enough, reminds me of Daisy Buchanan.

Enter Daisy Buchanan: Sonic’s Surprising Literary Mirror

Daisy is another character that is shaped more by how others see her than by who she truly is. Just like how Sonic is the embodiment of adventure, Daisy is the embodiment of the American Dream and all its glitz, glamour, elegance, and drowning materialistic riches. In The Great Gatsby, she is idolized, adored, and obsessed over by Gatsby because of all those things she represents rather than who she actually is. Keeping the objectivity going, Daisy is essentially a mirror, one that reflects others’ desires for the fantastical life she lives. She knows she is perceived as the ultimate trophy and is dangerously desirable. She knows what it means to be a woman in 1920s America.

And I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.

Like Sonic, she plays the role assigned to her. She understands that being ignorant (or appearing to be) is an effective survival strategy for living in a patriarchal society, so she puts on a performance for the world around her to create security and detachment from the confining reality she is shackled to. Her voice is full of money. She floats through rooms like an alluring dream. And yet, upon closer inspection, there’s nothing but hollowness. She doesn’t say anything meaningful outside of the central conflict of The Great Gatsby. She doesn’t fight for self-actualization; she’s simply there for the adventure. Like Sonic, she is her assigned persona. Whatever may lie beneath that surface will never emerge from its shallow waters.

Regardless of how radically different the genres and worlds these characters come from, Sonic and Daisy exhibit the fragile nature of persona. They both perform the roles given to them with little to no resistance. That doesn’t mean there is no expense to them though. Sonic may come off as “cool” and be “that guy,” but his lack of introspection and depth makes him emotionally flat compared to the other characters in the Sonic franchise. Daisy may be beautiful, desirable, and an object of many’s affections, but her detachment from everything combined with her hollow and careless nature makes her a tragic character. Sonic and Daisy are characters who refuse—some argue unable—to look inward and truly reflect. In turn, that makes their identities feel manufactured, fake, and hollow in a sense.

Persona vs. Person: The Cost of Being a Symbol

In both Daisy and Sonic, we have two characters who are less about who they are internally and more about what they symbolize in their respective worlds. Sonic stands for freedom, action, adventure, and simplicity. Daisy stands for desire, wealth, and unattainable dreams leading to unforeseen tragedy. While these personas most certainly make them iconic and widely discussed amongst their respective fandoms, they’re also trapped by these identities. The tragedy of Daisy is that the world and era she lives in only wants her to be a symbol of wealth and grace rather than a complex, flawed human being. The irony of Sonic is that being consistently characterized as carefree and unbothered across his franchise is actually giving him no room for growth. At their core, both of them reveal how powerful and limiting it can be to live behind a non-self embraced image.

The Show Must Come to an End: Who are We Without a Role?

For us as readers, gamers, or just as humans in general, we can’t help but wonder what will happen to us when we define ourselves by how others see us? What happens to us when we confuse our identity with the others’ perception of us? And what, if anything at all, is left of us when the show comes to an end?

Perhaps it’s not as simple as “What are you?”

What if it’s “Who gets to decide?”

Of Hedgehogs and Heiresses: A Curious and Unlikely Connection

I know it’s a very strange comparison, and this could also be seen as me wanting to rant about one of my peculiar interests alongside me giving voice to my inner-music nerd with the (unnecessary, yet supporting) section about leitmotifs, but I think Sonic and Daisy reveal interesting things about how persona and perception is portrayed in fiction as a whole. Whether it’s a blue hedgehog rolling around at the speed of sound or a socialite lounging around in her East Egg mansion, what you see isn’t always what you get. 

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