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mark_asphodelThis is an extension of something I said over at ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
amielleon's place.
War. The battle between overwhelming Evil and whatever Good is still left on the planet. The Fate of the World (TM) in the hands of a chosen few.
Pretty high-stakes stuff, right? Perfect for an Epic Story-- a novelization, even. Well, maybe.
Low-stakes and mid-stakes stories are a good and lovely thing, and shouldn't be neglected, but let's just set those aside for tonight. Let's focus on ways that a high-stakes tale of Jugdral or Elibe or Tellius can just... not work. If high-stakes drama isn't your thing, then this probably doesn't apply to you.
1) The audience knows what's going to happen.
Actually, knowing the plot twists shouldn't "spoil" anything-- you know sitting down to a performance of Romeo and Juliet that they're not riding off into the Italian sunset, right? The Ancient Greeks knew that Antigone's uncle Creon wasn't going to admit that she was right and then let her marry his son. So, theoretically, a treatment of the first-gen Jugdral characters should be enhanced by the knowledge that most of them will come to a horrible end. That in itself is not the problem.
2) Things are overmatched in favor of the Good Guys. The 'fic reads like the equivalent of Easy Mode.
The enemies are surrounded, Team Blue has the entire army intact and all their legendary weapons and everybody's Level 20/20 and shows it. If they're that awesome, why did this war take so bloody long in the first place?
3) The Bad Guys are too stupid/careless to win.
Fortunately, we don't see much of this in Fire Emblem, but in many media properties, it's a problem with canon.
4) The Good Guys are too stupid/careless to win, yet do anyway.
Arguably a problem with Fire Emblem canon in some cases. Also a problem in fanfiction, often when an inexperienced writer has allegedly intelligent characters making truly ludicrous mistakes ("Don't worry, Lyn-- it's OK to be hit by a blunt axe!")
5) The writer tilts the playing field in a more subtle way than given above.
Huge problem, IMO. One of the biggest problems facing alleged war stories in FE fandom is the refusal of writers to let any character who doesn't die in the plot to well, die. Come on, guys. If there's no actual threat to your army because the tactician is so damn brilliant that everyone sails through unscathed, then what's actually at stake here? If Eliwood and his friends can't lose, because the writer won't let them lose, then something's fundamentally wrong with the conception of that writer's war epic, IMO. Seriously, read The Red Badge of Courage or All Quiet on the Western Front or even Catch-22 and imagine yourself a version wherein only the bad guys die and the good guys all have a pithy little quote-party at the end before they all shack up together.
[Aside-- I think Franz gets killed a lot in FE8 fiction because he's exactly the type of character who does get offed in professional war stories. It feels appropriate.]
6) Refusal to deviate from canon.
YMMV. Some writers won't let anyone die because their conception of canon doesn't allow for it. Some consider various game routes to be irreconcilable. Some consider(ed) the Gaiden chapters in FE11 to be non-canon because of the conditions that had to be met to obtain them. Like #1, this is not a problem by itself.
And sometimes all these combine to turn what is allegedly a high-stakes drama into a low-stakes comedy, and by "comedy" I mean a broken situation put right, not a laugh fest. The prime example of this would be the many, many versions of Lyn's Tale floating around.
Lyn's Tale looks good, on the surface, for a full-scale dramatic treatment. It has a small band of characters, a tight plot, and even a remarkably sympathetic guy on the wrong side in General Eagler. But there's a real problem in trying to weave a great dramatic epic of wartime realism out of FE7's tutorial. There is nothing at stake. Quite literally nothing. Canon dictates that the worst that could happen is that someone goes home with an owwie and the Tactician's rating isn't so great. Everybody comes back for the second act. And, given the vast number of Lyn's Tale stories out there, at this point the readership is quite familiar with that fact. Unless the author is willing to dispense with #6, points #1, #5, and arguably #2 come together for something that might look on the surface like an "epic," but actually is no such thing. It's a sweet little comedy of camaraderie and coming-of-age pretending to be a war story, so "edgy" Tacticians and such end up ringing horribly, horribly false... and, personally, I just don't feel like reading any more of these any time soon. To a certain extent, all fanfiction is about making the reader salivate on cue like a trained dog, and when it comes to Lyn's Tale, at this point my mouth is dry and my tail ain't wagging. It's not that it's overdone, not exactly-- it's that the overdone-ness, and the done-wrongness, have reduced the potential impact of a canon-compliant "serious" retelling to nothing. The writing and the characterization might be A++, but it's in the service of something that (again IMO) is a fundamentally dubious exercise. If you're going to be SRS BZNS about Lyn's Tale, at least change something up-- make it not be a comedy. Up the stakes.
Or relax and let the Tactician just be some random kid in a cloak and let Sain tell his jokes.
Some interesting Lyn's Tale AUs are here and here. One is rated M and the other T, both for good reason.
amielleon's place.War. The battle between overwhelming Evil and whatever Good is still left on the planet. The Fate of the World (TM) in the hands of a chosen few.
Pretty high-stakes stuff, right? Perfect for an Epic Story-- a novelization, even. Well, maybe.
Low-stakes and mid-stakes stories are a good and lovely thing, and shouldn't be neglected, but let's just set those aside for tonight. Let's focus on ways that a high-stakes tale of Jugdral or Elibe or Tellius can just... not work. If high-stakes drama isn't your thing, then this probably doesn't apply to you.
1) The audience knows what's going to happen.
Actually, knowing the plot twists shouldn't "spoil" anything-- you know sitting down to a performance of Romeo and Juliet that they're not riding off into the Italian sunset, right? The Ancient Greeks knew that Antigone's uncle Creon wasn't going to admit that she was right and then let her marry his son. So, theoretically, a treatment of the first-gen Jugdral characters should be enhanced by the knowledge that most of them will come to a horrible end. That in itself is not the problem.
2) Things are overmatched in favor of the Good Guys. The 'fic reads like the equivalent of Easy Mode.
The enemies are surrounded, Team Blue has the entire army intact and all their legendary weapons and everybody's Level 20/20 and shows it. If they're that awesome, why did this war take so bloody long in the first place?
3) The Bad Guys are too stupid/careless to win.
Fortunately, we don't see much of this in Fire Emblem, but in many media properties, it's a problem with canon.
4) The Good Guys are too stupid/careless to win, yet do anyway.
Arguably a problem with Fire Emblem canon in some cases. Also a problem in fanfiction, often when an inexperienced writer has allegedly intelligent characters making truly ludicrous mistakes ("Don't worry, Lyn-- it's OK to be hit by a blunt axe!")
5) The writer tilts the playing field in a more subtle way than given above.
Huge problem, IMO. One of the biggest problems facing alleged war stories in FE fandom is the refusal of writers to let any character who doesn't die in the plot to well, die. Come on, guys. If there's no actual threat to your army because the tactician is so damn brilliant that everyone sails through unscathed, then what's actually at stake here? If Eliwood and his friends can't lose, because the writer won't let them lose, then something's fundamentally wrong with the conception of that writer's war epic, IMO. Seriously, read The Red Badge of Courage or All Quiet on the Western Front or even Catch-22 and imagine yourself a version wherein only the bad guys die and the good guys all have a pithy little quote-party at the end before they all shack up together.
[Aside-- I think Franz gets killed a lot in FE8 fiction because he's exactly the type of character who does get offed in professional war stories. It feels appropriate.]
6) Refusal to deviate from canon.
YMMV. Some writers won't let anyone die because their conception of canon doesn't allow for it. Some consider various game routes to be irreconcilable. Some consider(ed) the Gaiden chapters in FE11 to be non-canon because of the conditions that had to be met to obtain them. Like #1, this is not a problem by itself.
And sometimes all these combine to turn what is allegedly a high-stakes drama into a low-stakes comedy, and by "comedy" I mean a broken situation put right, not a laugh fest. The prime example of this would be the many, many versions of Lyn's Tale floating around.
Lyn's Tale looks good, on the surface, for a full-scale dramatic treatment. It has a small band of characters, a tight plot, and even a remarkably sympathetic guy on the wrong side in General Eagler. But there's a real problem in trying to weave a great dramatic epic of wartime realism out of FE7's tutorial. There is nothing at stake. Quite literally nothing. Canon dictates that the worst that could happen is that someone goes home with an owwie and the Tactician's rating isn't so great. Everybody comes back for the second act. And, given the vast number of Lyn's Tale stories out there, at this point the readership is quite familiar with that fact. Unless the author is willing to dispense with #6, points #1, #5, and arguably #2 come together for something that might look on the surface like an "epic," but actually is no such thing. It's a sweet little comedy of camaraderie and coming-of-age pretending to be a war story, so "edgy" Tacticians and such end up ringing horribly, horribly false... and, personally, I just don't feel like reading any more of these any time soon. To a certain extent, all fanfiction is about making the reader salivate on cue like a trained dog, and when it comes to Lyn's Tale, at this point my mouth is dry and my tail ain't wagging. It's not that it's overdone, not exactly-- it's that the overdone-ness, and the done-wrongness, have reduced the potential impact of a canon-compliant "serious" retelling to nothing. The writing and the characterization might be A++, but it's in the service of something that (again IMO) is a fundamentally dubious exercise. If you're going to be SRS BZNS about Lyn's Tale, at least change something up-- make it not be a comedy. Up the stakes.
Or relax and let the Tactician just be some random kid in a cloak and let Sain tell his jokes.
Some interesting Lyn's Tale AUs are here and here. One is rated M and the other T, both for good reason.
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no subject
Date: 2011-09-21 11:32 pm (UTC)I think this is because the game's main focus is on winning with losing no units at all.
However, I personally feel that you have two options re: novelization and deaths:
1. Kill off characters, or
2. Don't kill off characters.
If you go with option #1 there is plenty of character development and/or et cetera, like
If you take #2 there really needs to be a reason why-- or, if you're in a game where there's an actual military and your main characters happen to be a part of it (à la FE10) then the best thing to do is to at least show that people are dying-- just not your main cast!
That said, it's sometimes not enough for other people to die, and if you can't bear to part with main characters, I kind of feel a person shouldn't bother killing off anyone at all, i.e., killing off Fiona in an FE10 adaptation would really not have much of an impact on the reader (aside from the person or two in fandom that really likes her), so killing her off to try to prove SEE GAIZ PPL DIE just isn't going to work.
It can still have huuuge effects on other people, though. But if you're writing an IkeSoren, killing off Fiona is not going to get much of a reaction at all from the audience. (Or Ike or Soren.) So it's kind of, imo, not worth doing.
That said, for FE7 (or any novelization that has the main cast (or a part of the main cast) separated from the rest of a military unit alone), there really needs to be something THERE that makes everyone living make sense.
Not, "Teehee, it's another victory!" *V-sign, v-sign*
Cause if Eirika and 10 others are fighting even just 11 other guys, there is always the chance that EVEN ONE VS ONE, someone will lose, and that loss will equal death.
So the mental image of Eirika brofisting Forde and being all
YEAH WE'RE AWESOME
Just doesn't fit.
And same with Eliwood and Co. If they're up against morphs, there could be more than double their numbers-- numbers won a lot of wars then (not necessarily skill, as skill caaaaan be useful but I'd wage it's not so useful as it could be on the battlefield). So. If they're getting out unscathed. Just. They should be praying or kissing the ground or some shit. Cause it'd be a literal miracle they survived.
A legit miracle. And they'd KNOW IT TOO.
I doubt many would take it for granted.
ALSO
It wouldn't hurt to maim someone or two or three someones. You know, just "keeping it real". Or as real as a fantasy strategy game can be if nobody actually dies.
But again, I go with killing people (and maiming people) because it gives your audience...idk, something to worry about. :P And because it can create tension, character development, and most importantly, if you kill off the right people, you can make your audience CRY.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-21 11:58 pm (UTC)So why spazz out over Casual Mode if death always makes one hit the reset button anyway? FE fandom, I do not get thee.
But if you're writing an IkeSoren, killing off Fiona is not going to get much of a reaction at all from the audience. (Or Ike or Soren.)
Hahaha. I've kind of played with that in longer FE11 stories, though-- start by killing off a few characters no one gives a crap about, and then up the stakes by offing, say, Caeda.
So the mental image of Eirika brofisting Forde and being all
YEAH WE'RE AWESOME
Just doesn't fit.
FE8 does have the Frelian army backing our heroes for a large chunk of the story, but your point definitely stands for the earlier chapters.
numbers won a lot of wars then
So did superior weapons. I mean, I hate it when 'fic talks about Brave Lances and Killing Edges, but having your crappy little army confronted by a Lunatic Mode enemy squad of pre-promotes equipped with silver weapons is a pretty damn scary scenario. There's got to be a way to make those in-game "Oh shit" moments translate into prose.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 12:09 am (UTC)Basically, superior weapons and craftmanship would be even more well-known by the characters.
For example, Wil and Rath could be like, the greatest archers EVER, but if they've got tired old worn bows they've been using for years, and/or the string's not as taut as it could be, and/or their arrows aren't very good or well-made, or the fletching is just shabby, then they're not going to be able to do their job to the best of their ability!
Same goes for, say, Raven. If he's got a worn, cheaply-made sword (and this might be all he can afford), all that's going to save him in a 1 vs. 1 match is skill. It might be hard to translate to fic in a general manner and without infodumping, but I guess in regular conversation someone might make an offhand comment about needing their weapon(s) sharpened, and someone else might say, aw, yeah, me too man, mine needs some work, or my blade's getting dull, or something like that.
And before they get to a town, maybe those same people are like, aw shit, soldiers from X place. Well you know their weapons are ready for battle.
Might not really impress the situation upon the audience the same as telling them exactly what it means in plain text, but it's better than calling a sword a "killing edge" or a "silver sword", you know?
I'm sure there's a nation or two in each game that is known for their superior weaponry.