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| “ | "You can doubt me, but I'll protect you anyway because I'm a good friend and because it distracts me from the government agents that're replacing my plants with violins" | „ |
| ~ Sticks the Badger |
Sticks the Badger is the pentagonist in the Sonic Boom TV series. She is an anthropomorphic jungle badger and a force of nature in every way.
She has spent most of her life living alone and flourishing in the wilderness and is as such new to friends in general. After meeting Sonic and his friends, however, she forms a strong bond with the group, particularly with Amy Rose.
She is voiced by Nika Futterman, who also voiced Cuckoo-Loca from Minnie's Bow-Toons and Mickey and the Roaster Racers/Mickey Mouse Mixed-Up Adventures, Luna Loud from The Loud House and Miguel Santos from Maya and Miguel.
Contents
Concept and Creation
According to Hiroyuki Miyazaki, Chief Content Officer for the Sonic Brand, Sega of America, "Sticks is a significant addition to the Sonic Boom universe and the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise" and is meant to form the core ensemble featured throughout the Sonic Boom franchise alongside Sonic, Tails, Amy and Knuckles. Helping round off the cast, she is meant to bring a quirky personality and perspective to the team dynamic and her character adds an endless amount of humor and surprise to the Sonic Team.
According to Bill Freiberger, the impetus for creating Sticks is very often to deliver his message, and represents his point of view and belief system. This is the reason why Sticks will say something absurd, only to be proven correct in the end. In Freiberger's opinion, Sticks brings a healthy dose of cynicism to the series to counter the heroism of her friends, making her more akin to an anti-hero.
Early artwork of Sticks shows she was supposed to have white sports tape for her hair locks and only have one eyelash. The sports tape was eventually changed to auburn strings and she ended up having two eyelashes.
Appearance
Sticks is an anthropomorphic badger only slightly shorter than Amy. She has orange fur with long thick hair on the back of her head, which she keeps in two locks with auburn strings, and two brown stripes across each of her eyes and bushy round ears that reach the end of her hair. Additionally, she has a peach muzzle with a small black nose, blue eyes and a medium-long bushy tail.
Sticks' attire consists of a tube top and a skirt with an auburn rope belt, each made of worn-down grey fabric stitched together, and tan fur-skin boots, one which has a fur cuff and the other which has metal bands on it. As accessories, she wears a golden band on her right upper arm, a spiral bracelet on her left wrist and a necklace braided with seashells and a gold ring.
Personality
Sticks is energetic and rather primal, like a wild animal. She has sharp animal instincts and is a fearsome combatant and tenacious hunter. Because of her isolated life, Sticks has become a little quirky, eccentric and thinks others are living in an alternate world.
In spite of her background, she is intelligent, though her manner of speaking comes off as strange to other people as she speaks in a primitive dialect she taught herself.
Sticks loves spending time in her burrow and returns to it for safety when a situation becomes too bizarre for her.
Because of her wildness, Sticks' social skills need plenty of work. She is not the most trusting individual and is full of outrageous suspicions (which are always proven right) and senses danger everywhere at all times.
While the concepts of sharing, compassion, and friendship are foreign to her, Sticks has a good heart and a genuine desire to get closer to Sonic and his friends, and is fiercely loyal to them.
However, this also creates an internal struggle for her; on one hand she is not sure she can handle the life outside her burrow, but on the other hand she loves her friends and wants to hang out with them.
Powers and Abilities
Sticks possesses unparalleled and quite accurate animal instincts. These include an expert sense of smell accurate enough to let her sniff out specific targets, like an animal.[31] She has extremely sharp wilderness survival skills in various areas, such as creating shelters and fires, knot tying (being capable of tying an entire net in a flash), bird calls, identifying edible mushrooms, navigation, and time measurement without modern instruments. She is also an excellent swimmer who can pull off undersea traversing where regular people need wet suits. Sticks is as well a talented hunter who can take down any prey with her signature equipment. Physically, Sticks is very swift and agile and has acrobatic skills on level with a circus acrobat, being capable of dodging successive laser shots and making high leaps with little trouble and minimal reaction time.
In battle, Sticks is a great warrior with fearsome combat skills due to her wild side. Sticks is proficient in the usage of several forms of weaponry (including expert archery), but she is most well-versed in the usage of boomerangs. She can throw boomerangs with absolute precision and without fail, including make-shift boomerangs made from things such as ladles and robot parts. Even without her weapons, Sticks is an adept martial artist and has descent skills in hand-to-hand combat. She is also skilled in weapon crafting, which is exemplified in the self-made weapons she uses. Also, while technology is not her forte, Sticks has some skills in programming missiles due to her past experiences of being caught in missile silos. Sticks has an uncanny sense of foresight, and often predicts the occurrence of unexpected situations long beforehand. Her imagination and awareness together make her very capable of devising uniquely effective solutions. After eating an Evil Cookie infused with Eggman's DNA, Sticks briefly gained genius-level intelligence. However, it reverted back to her normal level after being cured.
Weapons
Sticks is armed with handmade weapons at all times, most notably a handmade boomerang that she keeps in tow which she uses for not only long-ranged attacks that pack significant power, but also as a melee weapon. She also has an arsenal of additional weapons available which include a crossbow, a slingshot, nun-chucks, a net, a bō, a club, and a giant metal mace.
Appearances in Other Media
Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric/Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal
Sticks appears in Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric for the Wii U and Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal for the Nintendo 3DS, which serves as a prequel to the TV series.
She was a playable character in Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal and will play an integral role in the story after Amy gets kidnapped by the ancient villain Lyric the Last Ancient.
In Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal, she can perform the Homing Attack and use her boomerang to attack enemies and solve puzzles.
Relationships
Amy Rose
Among her new friends on Team Sonic, Sticks' best friend is Amy Rose, who is the one Sticks wants to get closer to the most. The two of them are very tight, with Sticks having acknowledged that Amy is the one person that will stand by her side, no matter what. The arguably greatest example of their friendship was when Amy had Sticks' back every step of the way during the time the Village turned against the badger. As thanks for her help, Sticks had the Village renamed after Amy. Also, as a symbol of their friendship, they each own a joinable BFF necklace.
While Amy helps Sticks adapt to civilization, Sticks is in turn willing to go to extremes to help and protect Amy, even when she doubts her. In fact, when Lyric the Last Ancient kidnapped Amy, Sticks immediately took off to save her without a plan or a clue. Also, just like Amy's shares her knowledge of civilization with Sticks, Sticks share her knowledge of the wilderness and the perks of instincts with Amy, showing that their relationship works both ways. Similarly, Sticks is willing to be the calm-minded one of them when Amy is in need of emotional support.
When working together, Sticks and Amy are a solid team, displaying well-oiled collaboration in different situations, like combat and wilderness survival. They also occasionally have girls-only activities where it is just the two of them hanging out together. While their different personalities make it difficult for them to find common ground during such events, they nonetheless always manage to make compromises that satisfy both of them, showcasing the strength of their friendship.
Sonic the Hedgehog
Another one of Sticks' closest friends and teammates is Sonic the Hedgehog. Sticks and Sonic are rather alike in regards to how they "go running into danger without a plan, a direction, or a clue," though Sticks is usually kept in line by Sonic. In terms of leadership, Sticks accepts Sonic as her team leader, though she does not really trust him (or anyone in charge).[50] Regardless, Sticks loves being friends with Sonic and enjoys hanging out with him, and will protect and help him the best way she knows how, even when he doubts her.[9][27] Likewise, she truly appreciates Sonic for what he is willing to do for her sake.[4] However, she does has her limits for how much of Sonic's snarkiness she can take and is not above putting him in his place when he deserves it.[32][33]
Miles "Tails" Prower
Miles "Tails" Prower is one of Sticks' teammates and close friends, though there is an opposing dynamic between them. While Sticks is generally suspicious and has crazy ideas, Tails is an inherent optimist and relies on facts and science which causes a great deal of bickering between the two.[10] This part of their relationship is even more strenuous due to Sticks' unease about technology, which Tails constantly uses.[26][51] For some reason, she is also very much against having Tails lead her.
Like many of her friends, Sticks tends to distrust Tails due to her exceeding paranoia; once she even thought he was a double-agent.[35] She also does not really acknowledge him as the smartest in their group (since she has given that honor to Amy), although she still recognizes his skills and appreciates his aid.[24] At the end of the day, despite their differences, Sticks loves having Tails as a friend and enjoys hanging out with him, and will protect him rather fiercely, even when he doubts her.[9][27] In one instance, she even found him more adorable than tough.[52] Also, despite their disagreements, Sticks will always make peace with Tails sooner or later as they come to appreciate each other's differences and contributions.
Knuckles the Echidna
Knuckles the Echidna is another of Sticks' friends and teammates. Out of everyone on her crew, Sticks tends to treat Knuckles as a more disposable member, having suggested more than once to destroy him when she deems its necessary;[53] once, when she thought Knuckles had appeared out of thin air, she wanted to kill him with fire.[54] She will also not hesitate to violently assault Knuckles, usually when he has angered her or for a bigger cause, like pulling out his bad tooth.[55][56][57]
Like her friends, Sticks does not find Knuckles very smart, although she is not bothered as much about it as the others. In fact, Knuckles is often the only one who believes in Sticks' theories. Similarly, Sticks has demonstrated remarkable confidence in Knuckles, namely when she was sure he could tip the luck balance of the universe in his favor before he got himself killed.[18] While Knuckles gets on Sticks' nerves sometimes, she nonetheless loves having Knuckles as a friend and enjoys hanging out with him. She will likewise protect him rather fiercely when she wants to.[9][27] To Knuckles, Sticks also helps fill out the kind of loneliness he gets about being the last of his kind by being the family he longs for.
Zooey
Dr. Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik
Like the rest of Team Sonic, Sticks' sworn enemy is Dr. Eggman. However, they have a rather complex relationship. On one hand, Sticks always fights Eggman to foil his plans for domination. When not fighting though, they keep a more passive relationship where they let each other be nearby without starting to brawl.
On her part, Sticks sees Eggman as a reasonable threat, having underlined how his robots destroy everything and supposedly put songs in people's head that they cannot forget.[53] She also does not trust the doctor under normal circumstances when he claims that he is not up to something (noticeably even less than her friends) and instead suspects that he has an evil scheme in play (which is usually correct).[55][58] In spite of that, Sticks still thinks that Eggman himself is a total joke.[59] Because of her constant victories over him, Sticks has a tendency to underestimate Eggman and forget how dangerous he can be.[32]
Orbot
Trivia
- As such, many fans initially mistook Sticks as a supposed Sonic Boom incarnation of Marine before she was revealed to be a new character.
- Sticks is the only member of Sonic's crew to not wear sports tape. However, her boomerang has sports tape on it.
- She is also the only member to have known relatives.
- Early concept artwork of her also depicted her having sports tape for hair bands.
- Sticks is the only member of Sonic's team who does not wear any gloves.
