On December 14th, 2018, I drew my first ever drawing of Illidan Stormrage. For almost six years, he was the main character that I drew. There’s so much that I love about this guy. His design. His story. His personality. His angst. His weapons. His voice. He’s definitely one of the characters who has stuck with me the longest. I remained absolutely obsessed with him for most of my teen years.

This all started because I was playing through Legion for the first time. I had just gotten to Argus, so I was seeing Illidan a lot. And, while I was playing through Argus, I was also reading through the Illidan novel that was a prequel to Legion. Basically, young Shadez was seeing Illidan so much at that time, and decided that he was the coolest character ever.

I drew him probably around at least 500 times all together. I wrote a ton of fanfictions about him—two of which passed the 100,000-word mark (the current one is getting close to 200,000 words). I dressed up as him for Halloween three times, I believe. I read the aforementioned book 20+ times.

Basically, I was completely obsessed.

And, seven years later, I still am.

My Illidan phase took a brief break towards the end of 2024. I’ve mentioned before that I ran into problems on social media that led me to quit. These problems were fandom-related, and, unfortunately, tainted my love for Illidan slightly. I came to associate him with social media and the toxicity of fandom. So, I decided to step away from social media and from Illidan for a little while. I didn’t want my love for this character to be completely ruined.

In the meantime, I became obsessed with Sonic the Hedgehog. I started playing Sonic Frontiers shortly after I quit social media. I quickly became hooked. In the next few months, I also played Sonic and the Black Knight, Sonic Adventure, and The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog.

And, then, towards the end of Feburary of 2025, I played Sonic Forces.

And this is how all this Sonic nonsense relates to Illidan.

You know Infinite? Yeah, the villain from this game who never showed up again? The one who just so happened to be another edgelord voiced by Liam O’Brien?

Being as obsessed with Illidan as I was, it was only natural that Infinite would remind me of him. Seeing him in action got me really excited. I got attached to Infinite really fast. He was a really cool villain, obviously. But, like I said, he reminded me so much of Illidan. The voice. The edginess. His attitude. Very full of himself and a little overconfident. He has that same dramatic way of speaking.

After playing Sonic Forces, my Illidan phase came back. Infinite reminded me of how cool Illidan is. I picked up my Illidan fanfiction again shortly after playing Sonic Forces. For most of 2025, I’ve been obsessed with both WoW and Sonic.

And, then, in October, Legion Remix started, which definitely helped me get even more obsessed with Illidan again. I was thinking about giving up on my fanfiction again recently (my confidence struggles are really bad, okay?), but then I brought one of my Timerunners to Argus. That inspired me to continue working on my fanfiction again (not on a strict schedule, just whenever I feel like it).

So, thanks to Sonic Forces and Legion Remix, my Illidan obsession is back in full swing. While he’s not my primary obsession right now, Illidan will always be one of my favorites.