I am not a psychologist so I have no clue if this is just my own crackpot theory or what. And my apologies if I’m speaking out of my ass here.
We were not made for a fallen world. We were made for Eden. Since we have to live in this world corrupted by sin, the brain does what it has to in order to survive.
A toddler doesn’t know what “hot” means, until one day you warn the child not to touch a plate because it’s “hot,” they touch anyways, they feel the sting, and now they understand what “hot” means. The brain, now acknowledging this is something that can be a threat, has an immediate response to “hot.” Anytime someone says “hot,” we immediately recoil and make sure we don’t touch whatever is believed to be hot. The brain is simply trying to survive.
I think there’s a similar thing happening with trauma response. It’s the brain doing the same thing, but to such an extreme degree that it’s almost impossible to function. If someone survives a near fatal car crash, they may panic when they go near a car. Why? Because the brain has learned this thing to be an immediate and serious threat. The brain is now trained to fear and recoil. If you lived in a war zone and learned to sleep with one eye open so to speak, the brain is now trained to sense danger at every turn, especially when you’re in such a vulnerable state as sleep. You’re living in a constant state of anxiety because you expect a fatal threat. It’s why sudden noises and movements can trigger anxiety.
The brain is doing what it does. It adapts to perceived threats for survival. This heightened state of anxiety is deemed necessary by the brain, but we were not made to live in such a state. We cant. So the brain is, ironically, slowly killing itself. The brain is rewired and burned out and always looking for that next serious threat. It’s always reminding us that the threat looms. It’s where the subconscious lives. It’s why there’s constant anxiety, why there’s nightmares.
Of course, this can be exacerbated if the trauma is accompanied by severe grief or guilt.
This brings me to my point. If you would not tell someone to just pray the cancer away, I don’t think you can tell them to just pray the trauma away. We’re talking about a real physiological problem happening.
I think grief and guilt can be assuaged by the gospel. But the brain’s inner working itself? It’s a medical problem the same as any other. God absolutely can heal trauma same as cancer, but sometimes he doesn’t. Faith can absolutely bring about peace in hardships and give us the strength to carry on, but it’s not a guarantee that God will remove the hardship. That would be prosperity gospel.
And with all of this we can also recognize that certain treatments or habits may help relieve symptoms without fully curing, it exists on a medical spectrum.
And I think this is true about a lot of mental illness.
For the record, I think most mental illness in modern America is actually spiritual illness. And I think most psychologists are looney tunes. But people abusing a certain field of study and being stupid and misdiagnosing doesn’t negate the field of study as a whole.
If every sick person who walks into a doctors office no matter the symptoms gets diagnosed with cancer, it means the doctor is a quack and we have a problem of over diagnosis of a disease. But it doesn’t mean the disease isn’t real and that a certain percentage of the population doesn’t actually suffer from it. That would be a downright foolish thought.
Hormones, brain function, all of it can affect the mind. The brain is a complex organ. We still can’t fully understand it. And I don’t think we ever will. We know the brain can affect the mind. If it didn’t, people with TBIs would never suffer from sudden mental illness or personality shifts.
It seems wholly unchristian to deny the reality of both our body and the fallen state of the world.
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Why Blaze is so Cool
There's not gonna be much of a preamble on this, it's basically just what the title says. We're gonna go over Blaze's design, character arc, and personality + miscellaneous, all while comparing and contrasting with Sonic, who she was created to be a rival and a friend to. And hopefully by the end of it I will have convinced you that Blaze is one of the best characters in this franchise. And maybe converted a couple to my Sonaze agenda by explaining just how good of rivals and friends they are, although that is secondary.
Let's go. Put under a cut because I don't hate my followers MOST of the time.
Part 1: Design
Blaze's design, like most characters in this franchise, is simple and striking. In terms of pure aesthetic it's very cohesive, with a good balance of visual elements and an excellent color palette to make her stand out among the already extensive cast of characters.
Not only is it aesthetically pleasing, it also portrays her character very well. Her clothing, which is formal yet practical (unlike most princesses in fiction she wears pants instead of a floofy dress) and it also shows that she's of royal blood. Purple, especially darker purple like with her tailcoat and the tips of her tail and "ponytail", is often used to signify royalty in fiction, and that combined with the gold necklace gives attentive audience members multiple clues towards the fact that she's kind of a big deal. The flared out cuffs on her gloves and shoes like just a tiny bit like fire. Admittedly her wearing heels is not very practical, but heels are generally seen to be a formal shoe, again tying into the royalty thing. Additionally, the fact that they are small heels (kitten heels, to be precise) makes it far more believable than if she was running around in high heels, and the fact that Blaze the Cat is specifically wearing kitten heels is adorable. The fact that she is wearing a bindi also is a subtle indication that she isn't from Sonic's dimension, as we have never seen any kind of accessory like that before in this franchise. Finally, Blaze's "hair" being tied back into a ponytail is used to show her personality: withdrawn, restrained, and work focused.
Her Super Form, Burning Blaze, also has an exceptionally cool design. Her colors turn from primarily purple with hints of red, pink, and gold to primarily red, with hints of purple, gold, and pink. Her hair, tail, and the cuffs on her gloves and shoes all turn into fire and drift up, showing just how much her power level has increased that her fire powers are literally leaking out of her. It looks raw as hell, to put it simply.
Okay, so Blaze by herself looks cool as fuck, and her design makes sense for her character. But how was she designed to be an equivalent and yet alternate Sonic?
There's a lot I'm going to go into here, so I'll just start with the big ones right off the bat. Beginning with their color palettes, both of their main colors (purple and blue) are right next to each other on the color wheel, and they are similar, but not the exact same, in hue. Additionally, purple (Blaze's fur color) inverted is green (Sonic's eye color), and blue (Sonic's fur color) inverted is yellow (Blaze's eye color). Other aspects of their designs contrast as well: Blaze has sharp eyes and a small nose, Sonic has round eyes and a long nose. In terms of attire, however, they're actually fairly similar. Both have pure white gloves with pure white cuffs, both have the same shoe design (solid color shoe designed to help them run fast interrupted by a white stripe in the middle) with the only differences being Sonic wearing red boots, Blaze wearing pink heels. They also both wear gold on what is most likely their most prized possession: Sonic has a gold buckle on the shoes that help him run fast and freely, Blaze has a gold necklace on the tailcoat that signifies her status as a royal.
Super Sonic and Burning Blaze are also designed to complement each other. Super Sonic is golden with firey red eyes, Burning Blaze is red with glowing golden eyes. Additionally, in specifically the version of Super Sonic we see depicted in Sonic Rush, his quills are chaotic, almost like they've been windswept: his own powers let loose by the Chaos Emeralds, like Blaze's have been with the Sol Emeralds.
Part 2: The Character Arc
Sonic Rush and Sonic Rush Adventure, while having Sonic's name on the title, is basically Blaze's story, with Sonic simply serving as a catalyst for Blaze's development.
Beginning with Sonic Rush, Blaze is introduced as someone who is competent, but alone. She crashlands in Sonic's dimension alone, and if not for Cream's (and later Sonic's) interference, she would have failed in her mission, despite her competence, because she was alone and with no one to back her up. Over the course of the game she slowly opens up to characters other than Sonic (most notably Cream) while also hearing about how cool and awesome Sonic is and how he can help her with her mission, which is something that she absolutely does not want. So when she finally meets the hedgehog himself, and has a proper conversation with him, just like a true Sonic rival-to-be-turned-friend, she lashes out. And just like every other rival Sonic turns into a friend, she ends up needing sense literally beat into her.
(Side note but while obviously in the real world violence is a last resort for conflict resolution, I'm glad that the first female Sonic rival wasn't treated differently than every other male rival up to this point, and it makes sense for both characters that they would fight their emotions out rather than actually talking)
But, after getting all that frustration out of their systems, Sonic is finally able to make Blaze see what's been in front of her the whole time: she needs help just like everyone else, and if she doesn't accept it she's going to get others and herself hurt. Lesson learned with a hopefully minimal amount of bruising along the way, Blaze is able to form an alliance with Sonic, and while they head their separate ways again, it's not out of stubbornness and fear of relying on others on Blaze's part this team: it's because she trusts Sonic to do his part just as she knows that she can do her part.
But Sonic still has one more lesson to teach Blaze, and as cheesy as it may be, he teaches her about the power of friendship, which in franchises like Sonic the Hedgehog the power of positive thoughts and feelings do have real effects on the world all these characters live in. With the alliance between Sonic and Blaze having turned into a proper friendship, the two are able to defeat the enemies threatening the rest of your friends, and they share a sweet moment together (with Blaze holding her hand out to Sonic, for once) before Blaze returns to her home dimension.
Blaze's arc in Sonic Rush isn't exactly complex, but I'd argue that complicated arcs are really only things that the comics have touched on, for both better and worse. The simplicity of her arc allows for it to be solid and easily understandable, and it doesn't magically fix everything or make her an entirely different character. Blaze still has to return home at the end of the game despite literally holding on for as long as she could, and she's still emotionally reserved, quiet, and work focused, but now those things no longer dominate her personality to her own detriment.
Blaze's arc in Sonic Rush Adventure on the other hand, shows that she still has a ways to go. While she did fractionally open up in the original game, both Sonic and Cream are just naturally charming and sweet with few downsides to their personalities. Additionally, she only ever really worked with Sonic himself, who is essentially an equal in terms of competence and power. Marine, on the other hand... well, she's an excellently written character, but that doesn't change the fact that in universe she isn't a super competent fighter, she talks a lot, has a big head, and a plethora of other tiny flaws, all of which add up when you're trying to save the world. Throughout Rush Adventure Blaze first rejects Marine for her relative uselessness, and then learns to appreciate Marine for what she can do as well as the fact that she is trying to get better, just like Blaze once did. Blaze goes from being helped by Sonic to being a guiding figure for Marine, and it's likely that despite no further game appearances from Marine, they formed a bond similar to Sonic and Tails, again showing that Blaze is an alternate equivalent to Sonic (and also that the same goes for Marine and Tails, but that's a whole other post).
Sonic in the Rush series doesn't really have a narrative arc, but he doesn't need one, as these are essentially Blaze's games with Sonic as a consistent helping force.
Part 3: The Personality and the Little Details
Of course, a solid design and decent storyline doesn't really help if the character has all the personality of a slice of bread. Thankfully Blaze has personality to spare, even if she is on the more stoic side of the cast.
Blaze's personality is also extremely cool, both standalone and as an inversion to Sonic's. She's pretty unique among the girls in the series (who tend to be friendly, outgoing, sociable, and personal desire oriented: Amy, Cream, Tangle, Rouge, etc.) while Blaze is more withdrawn and cold than the others (ironic, given her name), and puts the needs of her kingdom ahead of her own wants and her needs. She is duty and goal oriented when we first meet her, not concerned with friends at all, and in fact she has none (basically the opposite of Sonic, except for the fact that he is occasionally goal oriented when the time arises. She's obsessed with being able to do everything by herself to the point of turning down Sonic's help and later attacking him to keep him out of the way, while he reaches out to her on multiple occasions. She is stoic, quiet, withdrawn, shy, has emotional and often aggressive outburts when she thinks she's been personally insulted or if someone gets in the way of her goals, and is primarily responsible. Sonic is enthusiastic, loud, outgoing, bold, does not care what others think of him and will often slow down for personal fun even if there are more serious matters, and is primarily laid back. She over thinks, he barely thinks. I could go on.
The two of them together create a balance. Fire power vs wind power. Wind=Fire Hazard, without oxygen a fire cannot even get started. She is royalty who is strict and honor bound and never seems out fights unless she thinks they are necessary, he is... Basically a homeless adventurer who gets into fights and danger for fun. She has a special link to the Sol Emeralds, he has a special link to the Chaos Emeralds. Her fighting style is based off ballet, his is based off of breakdancing. Fire needs order and focus to burn properly, if let loose it can cause massive damage. Wind needs freedom and space to blow freely, if stifled it will just peter out. Despite being a cat with fire powers she is alright in water but hates height (likely because more height=less oxygen=less fire power for her), he is a hedgehog who cannot swim yet operates quite well in air, despite cats irl being good with heights and bad with water, and the opposite for hedgehogs. "Blaze" meaning fiercely burning fire, the power she controls, (also indicating high speed), "Sonic" meaning relating to sound waves, the speed he can surpass (also also indicating high speed).
Because she's Sonic's equivalent, she's also basically his equal in combat, being the only female to tie with Sonic in a fight while a) not being a literal god cus Sonic fights literally gods and b) not having any power ups. He's slightly faster, but she has more (literal) fire power on her side. Their fighting styles also contrast with each other, I've already mentioned the ballet vs breakdancing thing but also there's Sonic's spontaneity vs Blaze's controlled movements, his rush and agility vs her grace and power, his tendency to annoy enemies into making mistakes and flit around them like an annoying bug, while Blaze just charged them head on and overwhelms them. Sonic's fight style is all based off of learning it the hard way, Blaze's is most likely based off of literal training as she is a princess. They mostly have contrast with some interesting overlaps, showing how they are as similar as they are different.
Another interesting thing about them is that Blaze attempts to keep all her emotions under check and is kinda bad at it, she can rarely conceal more extreme emotions and she gets loud and obvious about them, whereas Sonic initially appears to wear his emotions on his sleeve, but when it comes to more serious emotions and when he gets pushed emotionally he becomes quieter, colder, and more withdrawn. Blaze can become an open book and he slams shut. Blaze being surrounded by people for her entire life but not having any emotional connections with them vs Sonic most likely being alone before he met Eggman and Tails and then choosing to surround himself with friends and loved ones. Their contrast in life stories and their personalities was insanely well thought out and it really shows. And on a more subjective level, they just look really cool when paired together, because that was literally how they were designed.
Anyway in conclusion. Blaze is a fucking amazing character and a great rival and friend to Sonic, she deserves so much more attention in the franchise and fandomoverall and specifically should be played off of Sonic more because she was literally designed to be HIS friend and rival, Rush and Rush Adventure deserve remakes and also a proper sequel, and if they do ever make any of those then I will scream and cry and wail etc. and also Sonaze is the best ship in the franchise prove me wrong
TLDR: Blaze cool
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