>>544745084
Shadow has a vision of Maria and saves Rouge's life, and it makes her rethink how she views him. She is interested in what's really going on in his head afterwards, intrigued by Shadow's mystery. Rouge likes pretty mysterious things, y'know?
Aside from that, when it comes to SA2 I associate Rouge with Knuckles more. They clearly wanted some love-hate thing going on, some sort of tsundere rivalry-type dynamic. She was designed to play into his weaknesses, like his nervousness around girls. She has a strong lower body while he has a strong upper body.
They seemed to want to continue that in Heroes, the original plan was for Amy/Cream/Rouge to be on the same team. It'd neatly reflect Sonic/Tails/Knuckles. But they brought back Shadow, and Rouge already had an association with him.
They really solidified it with Sonic X - and Sonic X isn't canon, but it was overseen pretty heavily by Sonic Team, meaning someone on the official team approved all of the Knuckles/Rouge shipbait. But they stopped giving Knuckles proper focus, and his dynamic with Rouge sorta went down the drain.

>>544745582
Having a discussion is not forcing anything on you.

/sthg/ was much less reactionary many years ago... maybe it's just me, but I feel as though people's ability to parse, understand, and thoughtfully respond to what others are trying to say has noticeably declined.
It's not just on 4chan, it's everywhere on the internet. But it smarts even more on 4chan because having genuine unfiltered adult discussions is the appeal of it.
I don't feel like I'm communicating much differently than I did back in 2018 or so, yet I constantly find myself having to explain concepts I never had to clarify back then.