Fic Update and Raspberry Cobbler

[mark_asphodel]

So, I turned four cups of U-pick raspberries into a very nice cobbler.  The recipe is the "old-fashioned berry cobbler" in the middle of the page, the one with raspberries in it.  I substituted black raspberry jam and added some vanilla to the biscuit topping, and it went over very well at Sunday dinner. I've been on a baking binge, in between the two custard pies, this cobbler, and the plum butter kuchen I meant to write about that got lost in the shuffle.  Reason?  We still haven't turned the furnace on, and it's getting kind of chilly.  Oops.

-x-

We finally have a decent cupcake shop in my end of town.  I will elaborate on this critical development on a later date, but right now, all I have to say is: purple velvet cupcakes.  Yes.

-x-

So, speaking of cupcakes... no, wait cupcakes have nothing to do with Chapter Two of "Honesty is (Not) the Best Policy."

I'd be amiss not to say that I'm very excited that raphiael is continuing to poke at her girl!Ephraim story, because girl!Ephraim and girl!Marth really do present two different challenges.  Ephraim's image is, after all, overtly, defiantly masculine.  He's strong and tough and bold and uncouth enough to expose his naked shoulder to female eyes.  You have a beef with Ephraim, you challenge him to a duel and hope that you win.  And he has an explicit female foil in his sister... over whom he physically towers.  So, an female Ephraim who hits all those essential points would indeed be tricky to write.  Good luck, Raphi! :)

Marth?  Different story.  "Pretty tiara boy," as he is still known over on GameFaqs, has had his, ah, girlish side exaggerated to an exponential degree by fandom and SSB:Brawl, but he's not hitting a lot of the alpha-male points of characterization and never did.  That old Monshou no Nazo ad that was kicking around YouTube made it clear that he was being promoted as ideal fantasy fuel for a young girl.  He's safe, at least unless your name is Jiol or Lang.  It's not surprising at all that little girls like Maria and Malliesia, not to mention Tiki, gravitate toward him.

[I studied opera for a while in college-- Italian opera, mostly, but I did take a brief foray into Southern Chinese Yue opera and takarazuka theater.   "Trouser roles," and the requirements thereof, just fascinated me, particularly the assertion that in some forms of drama a female actor is the only way to capture the role of the romantic hero.]   

So the roles that need to be inhabited by the girls in question are pretty different.  But the game verses also present some unique challenges, and that's where Ephraim definitely has an advantage over Marth.   This'll be a weird ride, for certain.

Comments

[raphiael]

I keep going back and forth on how I'm going to explain the difference in size between Ephraim and Eirika. I mean, official art does have him as sort of skinny, and with "prettier" features compared to say, Seth, but even that isn't quite enough to bs away.

Stupid biology. Maybe I'll claim there are lifts in the boots. Yeah. Yeah.

But it definitely seems like we're dealing with very different themes, too, which is very cool!

[mark-asphodel.livejournal.com]

Well, there very often is a size difference in twins, even identical twins... which they aren't. You could make Ephraim half a head taller than Eirika and it would be perfectly reasonable. Eirika's the younger one anyway, and the first twin out is often the dominant one, so that all works. The size gap just wouldn't be as crazy as the CG portrays.

But it definitely seems like we're dealing with very different themes, too, which is very cool!

Yes. I'm going to be very excited to see where girl!Ephraim ends up. :)

[raphiael]

Yeah, that's probably what I'm going to go with. Basically I want to adhere to everything canon gives us, except the junk. Actually now that I look a bit more, they look a lot closer in height here, and this one, with perspective taken into account, makes Lyon look a lot taller than expected - possibly even taller than Ephraim, which is just a little weird. So I'm probably going to just shrug and make it a more immediately believable difference for sisters. It's not like the artists can make up their minds, anyway.

Thanks! I'm hoping I'll be able to do it before school stuff falls into place and everything.

[mark-asphodel.livejournal.com]

Some of the other art makes Knoll out to be weirdly tall, and I can buy that Lyon is, too. It actually would be a nice change-- a tall frail beanpole, instead of a little squishy short thing.

[raphiael]

Whoa, actually, that's true -- and it would be an interesting subversion of the expected.
. . .Maybe it's a good kind of weird, then.

[xirysa.livejournal.com]

Well, also Ephraim's also got a edge on her in terms of stature because he's also a man--being twins has nothing to do with it. (They'd have to be fraternal twins in canon anyway--there's no biological way you can have a pair of identical twins where one is male and one is female; the splitting of the zygote in the early stages of fetal development just doesn't work that way. :P)

[mark-asphodel.livejournal.com]

being twins has nothing to do with it.

Yes, but even if they were both the same sex, a substantial height difference is entirely possible. Male!Ephraim might be a full head taller than his younger twin, but female!Ephraim could easily be half a head taller.

They'd have to be fraternal twins in canon anyway

I was speaking hypothetically of girl!Ephraim as featured in Raphi's story. I used to work in a genetics lab, so I'm kind of familiar with biology at the zygote level.

[xirysa.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's true--generally speaking, they'd have to be fraternal twins, though it is true of identical twins as well. But I know what you mean; there's actually a pretty high rate of having twins in my family--I have a pair of "nieces" (it's complicated, family relation-wise) where one is barely 5' and the other is almost a foot a taller than her.

I figured you meant hypothetically--sorry if I came off as pretentious or anything. :P

[sailorvfan10.livejournal.com]

Oooh, cupcakes! And cobbler. ...I need to find a decent bakery around here.

Don't forget that with "Tiara boy" there was also the whole "Princess Marth" and "Prince Martha" thing as well in Smash Brothers fandom... Marth didn't even look all that girly in Melee, and he didn't even sound like a girl! ...And he still doesn't. Although now Brawl has him look like a girl and sound distinctly male.

and uncouth enough to expose his naked shoulder to female eyes.
Well Ephraim did always strike me as the rebellious type...

/slinks off to find a bakery

[mark-asphodel.livejournal.com]

Prince Martha is old hat, but the tiara boy meme is alive and well in gamer fandom:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/643003-fire-emblem-working-title/60567209

And that's FAR from the only place it's cited of late.

[sailorvfan10.livejournal.com]

"Marthy". That takes me back. Like, back before I knew who Midorikawa Hikaru was, back. I'd prefer to not be reminded of them.

I do call Marth "Tiara boy", but only as a term of endearment, and I certainly don't refer to him as that anywhere anyone might see. It's mostly when I just kicked someone's arse in Brawl (or Melee) and go, "Yeah, my Tiara Boy kicked your character's ass! >8D"

[xirysa.livejournal.com]

[I studied opera for a while in college-- Italian opera, mostly, but I did take a brief foray into Southern Chinese Yue opera and takarazuka theater. "Trouser roles," and the requirements thereof, just fascinated me, particularly the assertion that in some forms of drama a female actor is the only way to capture the role of the romantic hero.]

I'm not even going to lie, I flailed a little bit here, just because that's something I do on a regular basis--I play a lot of male roles for dance, and oh my stars it's incredibly hard to do perfectly and consistently. At least I get the benefit of also playing female roles in different dramas and productions; essentially acting as a different gender day in and day out? I can only imagine how difficult it must be. (Then again, it would also be something you'd gradually become very used to.)

ETA: Cupcakes. Do want.

[mark-asphodel.livejournal.com]

Then again, it would also be something you'd gradually become very used to.

Well, what if you didn't know any different? What if you'd been raised with short hair, wearing boy clothes, and maybe you noticed some weird little undercurrents or experienced some really weird incidents, but it wasn't until later that you realized WHAT that weirdness stemmed from? It's not a masquerade then, really-- not in the same way.

That's some very strange writing territory, and modern case studies don't help a whole lot. I should read Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, maybe... I've always meant to.

[samuraiter.livejournal.com]

(And I studied the Commedia dell'arte. Which I suppose says a lot about me.)

Meanwhile, I wish I had cobbler, but oatmeal will do.

[mark-asphodel.livejournal.com]

Commedia dell'arte is also interesting, and it's a shame it's pretty much vanished completely from US culture. I was looking at some early 20th Century Scaramouche and Harlequin puppets, used in US shows, in a museum on Saturday. Something did it in-- motion pictures, I guess.