Madison the Hedgehog

Madison the Hedgehog

Age: 24

Species: Hedgehog

Occupation: Fashion Designer, Owner of "Mad by Design" clothing label, former Honey Clothing apprentice

Lore:

Infatuated with dressing up her dolls with all sorts of crazy outfit combinations since she was just a wee toddler, Madison the Hedgehog is an up-and-coming fashion designer hoping to one day make it to the big time. Madison was born and grew up in Sunset City (it's a big place!) and spent much of her time in middle school and high school wearing all sorts of outrageous outfits that she would help make. Her single mother, Margaret, was a skilled seamstress and wanted to support her daughter's creativity in any way she could. So, she would work even harder at home than she did at work to help Madison create all sorts of new designs and ensembles. The extra work needed to pay for all the materials was tough, but it was worth it for Margaret as she saw her daughter's creativity blossom before her eyes. It would not be uncommon for Madison to show up one day to class wearing an elaborate white gown akin to a princess while all of her classmates were wearing jeans and hoodies. This practice got her picked on and bullied by some of the other girls sometimes for being weird, but Margaret was always there to let Madison know she was unique and held great potential. 

During high school, Madison's crazy outfit habit continued in full force. She was now able to make her own clothes and buy her own materials from working part-time at a local clothing store. During her time working at this store, Madison would need to dress more appropriately like a proper employee, but she didn't mind as she was the person who got to create the displays (which she was excellent at). Upon graduating from high school with top marks in the more artistic courses on offer, Madison was able to successfully apply for an apprenticeship at Honey the Cat's local Honey Clothing specialty shop. Here, Madison was able to create some of her own designs and offer them for sale, but most of her time was still spent working on assembling and tailoring Honey's designs. Whenever Honey herself would come to the location, Madison would try her best to get noticed. Unfortunately for her the competition among the other apprentices was fierce and it was incredibly difficult to stand out, so career progress was slow. However, a few notable residents of Sunset City like Angela and Luna did buy certain articles from Madison during her time as an apprentice. 

It wasn't until Eggman's war when the Honey Clothing branch in Sunset City was ruined. All of the items inside the shop were destroyed in a fire and Madison lost most of her outfit designs she was planning on presenting to Honey. Madison was safely evacuated like many others in the city as the fighting began, but it would not be for months until it was safe to return home. When she did, Madison was so moved by the destruction of her own work and the period of rebuilding that took place that she decided to strike out on her own. An incredibly risky gamble, Madison founded her own fashion label "Mad by Design", partially funded by her incredibly supportive mom's retirement pension. From there, Madison took up refuge in a cheap, modest studio on Gladstone Street, a good 15 minutes out of downtown and away from the rebuilding Honey Clothing shop. She then got to work labouring away to create a line of clothing to surpass even her former mentor.

Fast forward several more months and Madison's new label was in the dumps. She was struggling heavily to make ends meet with much lower-than-expected sales because her name was not established, and the designs were quite outlandish. Sunset City then became the site of conflict once again when Kovich and the DED Project surfaced for the final time. Fortunately, the day was saved by the Restoration, the returning crew of the Endurance, and in large part by a certain overalls-clad rabbit by the name of Penelope Robinson. Following the scuffle Penelope became a local hero and the talk of the city for quite some time. This gave Madison a brilliant idea, if she could somehow hire Penelope to model her outfits, she would certainly be able to boost her sales by a large amount with this celebrity endorsement. It was lucky timing for her as Penelope was still a high school student and needed a new summer job to start earning some money. In order to get to Penelope, Madison would go to Luna at her bookstore and speak with her about convincing Penelope to take the job. Fortunately, Penelope agreed to the job when Angela and Luna presented the offer because it looked easy enough and offered a decent pay for the amount of effort it was. What Penelope was not expecting was just how wild Madison's outfits could get...

Following her uptick in success with Penelope starring in her self-published blogs and magazines, Madison was able to gain more contracts for "Mad by Design". One of these particular contracts was with famous punk rock singer Victoria the Shiba Inu, from Vicky and the Doghouse. Madison is now responsible for making all of the bands' live performance outfits and has become quite close with Victoria herself, having gone on an ice cream date with her. Madison dropped her cone, but Victoria, in a surprising display of compassion for someone so rough around the edges, offered Madison her cone instead. All in all, things are looking up for Madison. Her girlfriend is a famous singer, she's dressing up the hero of Sunset City like a doll, and her label's popularity keeps on growing. Hopefully in the next little bit she'll be able to pay back her mom. 

Personality:

Madison is a bit of a "Cloud-Cuckoo-Lander". That is to say she is quite the eccentric individual. All of Madison's life, she has been infatuated with making everything from herself, to her dolls, to her room as cute as possible. She is an incredibly inspired and determined individual who is always wanting to try out a new frill design or new combination of colours for her outfits. Madison's determination and creativity were reinforced during middle school by her mom when she was bullied by the other kids. Madison was taught to not let their words affect her, and to use it as fuel to continue making her craft better and better. "If they're being mean to you, that means they're jealous". Although Madison is quite determined, inspired and whimsical, her fascinations and ideas can be somewhat hard to follow for more down-to-earth people like Penelope for example. 

Madison can also get quite emotional, although she experiences the highest of highs when at her peak of creativity and joy, she also gets upset over little things quite easily. This is demonstrated on her date with Victoria when she tripped and dropped her ice cream. Instead of simply picking herself up, she sat on her butt and cried about it until Victoria stepped in to offer her cone as a replacement and to help Madison up. Although Madison can get quite sad and depressed easily, her natural creativity and drive will bring her out of this pit rather quickly more often than not.

Perhaps the greatest show of Madison's eccentricity is in her fashion designs. She is quite fond of the colour baby blue and adding things on to her dresses and outifts that make them appear quite infantile to most. For example, she once had Penelope begrudgingly agree to model some new sleepwear which unfortunately turned out to be a baby blue onesie with footies, a butt-flap, white cuffs, a collar, and a rubber duckie on the chest. This outfit led to a series of humiliating magazine spreads of Penelope that made her quite embarrassed. Another one of Penelope's most famous magazine spreads was for a baby blue Lolita dress with ludicrous amounts of lace, bows and frills. Perhaps a flaw in Madison's character is that she seems to fail to recognize that these outfits can be degrading and embarrassing to the person wearing them, but pretty much everyone except Penelope can agree she looks pretty flippin' adorable in the end. 

(Author's Note: When characters from Sunset City are doing a cute pose in strange outfits in their featured art, there's a good chance it is likely them modelling or posing for Madison's magazine. Madison is the super-duper-clever in-universe explanation for why some images of my characters exist.)