Update on Nothing Much
Mar. 20th, 2010 10:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mark_asphodel Yeah, I've written ONE line of dialogue this week. Yay.
Work + extra-curricular activities have lead to borderline burnout. I've become a passive consumer of entertainment-- too tired to write, too tired to play my new copy of HeartGold, reduced to sitting in front of the computer screen watching cartoons and machinima.
Recommendation:
Raishi Tsuwabuki has some pretty spiffy SSBB animated videos up on YouTube. They range from super-fluffy to super-duper disturbing. Primary focus is Ness and Lucas from the Mother series, Link, and Red the Pokemon Trainer. Almost everything has overtones of shonen ai, including allusions to my least favorite pairing in the videogame universe, Marth/Roy. [Words do not suffice to explain how much I hate that pairing. Even Ike/Pit, which I also loathe, doesn't come close.] But the style is very pleasing to the eye... and the idea of li'l Ness as a serial killer with a collection of severed hands in pots is just not something you're likely to come across anywhere else.
Anyway, I have the germ of an SSB: Melee 'fic sprouting in my brain now. Must... resist... evil.
About the passionate burning hatred for Marth/Roy:
Well, for one, is it EVER canon!Marth in any form paired up with canon!Roy? Maybe once in one-thousand stories. Stories that claim to involve the FE reps from SSBM mostly involve generic stock characters tricked out in swords and capes. Look, people, just because Hikaru Midorikawa is Marth's VA doesn't mean you can repurpose old Heero Yuy/Duo Maxwell stories (that were no good to start with) and call it anything to do with Fire Emblem. That "icy emotionless bastard meets hyperactive goofball" stuff was old a DECADE ago.
I admit that part of the blame goes to the makers of SSBM, who very deliberately presented Marth to the world as angsty piece of fangirl bait. I have to wonder what the Japanese fans thought of Melee!Marth... or maybe NoA just did weird stuff to his character bio. But NoA didn't design Melee!Marth, or give him those lines for Midorikawa to voice. No, sir-- that was a packaging job that got a message across very, very effectively... it just so happens that the "message" has precious little to do with FE3 and its hero.
But the shit that gets done to Roy can't be pinned on the SSBM staff. The presentation of Roy there is very straightforward (even if he makes me want to gouge my eyes out with his too-bright color scheme and gooey blue stare). Fangirls came up with the standard Roy characterization-- immature, often hot-headed, prone to terrible jokes and pranks and pratfalls. In other words, nothing whatsoever in a million billion years to do with the hero of FE6. In fact, many of the fandom cliches about Roy and Marth stem purely from their haircolor-- a barrage of "redhead" stereotypes paired with stereotypes about however the hell people with naturally blue hair "ought" to act.
[Canon!Marth paired with Canon!Roy would still suck in its own right because it would be BORING.]
OK. So you have hundreds, maybe thousands, of stories featuring fake!Marth and fake!Roy, wrapped up in more generic cliches as found in any yaoi fandom, plus a lot of fangirl Japanese, with nothing whatsoever to balance it out except for decent writing once in a blue moon (the works of El Nino1). I have never seen a pairing that is more purely a construct of the fangirl imagination... and what a limited imagination it is, my friends. I need not belabor the details-- either you already know, or you don't want to.
[I hate Ike/Pit, too, but for slightly different reasons... though I believe Ike/Pit is very much a "replacement" for Marth/Roy now that SSBB has deprived Roy's fangirls of their beloved.]
OK. I'm done. For now.
Work + extra-curricular activities have lead to borderline burnout. I've become a passive consumer of entertainment-- too tired to write, too tired to play my new copy of HeartGold, reduced to sitting in front of the computer screen watching cartoons and machinima.
Recommendation:
Raishi Tsuwabuki has some pretty spiffy SSBB animated videos up on YouTube. They range from super-fluffy to super-duper disturbing. Primary focus is Ness and Lucas from the Mother series, Link, and Red the Pokemon Trainer. Almost everything has overtones of shonen ai, including allusions to my least favorite pairing in the videogame universe, Marth/Roy. [Words do not suffice to explain how much I hate that pairing. Even Ike/Pit, which I also loathe, doesn't come close.] But the style is very pleasing to the eye... and the idea of li'l Ness as a serial killer with a collection of severed hands in pots is just not something you're likely to come across anywhere else.
Anyway, I have the germ of an SSB: Melee 'fic sprouting in my brain now. Must... resist... evil.
About the passionate burning hatred for Marth/Roy:
Well, for one, is it EVER canon!Marth in any form paired up with canon!Roy? Maybe once in one-thousand stories. Stories that claim to involve the FE reps from SSBM mostly involve generic stock characters tricked out in swords and capes. Look, people, just because Hikaru Midorikawa is Marth's VA doesn't mean you can repurpose old Heero Yuy/Duo Maxwell stories (that were no good to start with) and call it anything to do with Fire Emblem. That "icy emotionless bastard meets hyperactive goofball" stuff was old a DECADE ago.
I admit that part of the blame goes to the makers of SSBM, who very deliberately presented Marth to the world as angsty piece of fangirl bait. I have to wonder what the Japanese fans thought of Melee!Marth... or maybe NoA just did weird stuff to his character bio. But NoA didn't design Melee!Marth, or give him those lines for Midorikawa to voice. No, sir-- that was a packaging job that got a message across very, very effectively... it just so happens that the "message" has precious little to do with FE3 and its hero.
But the shit that gets done to Roy can't be pinned on the SSBM staff. The presentation of Roy there is very straightforward (even if he makes me want to gouge my eyes out with his too-bright color scheme and gooey blue stare). Fangirls came up with the standard Roy characterization-- immature, often hot-headed, prone to terrible jokes and pranks and pratfalls. In other words, nothing whatsoever in a million billion years to do with the hero of FE6. In fact, many of the fandom cliches about Roy and Marth stem purely from their haircolor-- a barrage of "redhead" stereotypes paired with stereotypes about however the hell people with naturally blue hair "ought" to act.
[Canon!Marth paired with Canon!Roy would still suck in its own right because it would be BORING.]
OK. So you have hundreds, maybe thousands, of stories featuring fake!Marth and fake!Roy, wrapped up in more generic cliches as found in any yaoi fandom, plus a lot of fangirl Japanese, with nothing whatsoever to balance it out except for decent writing once in a blue moon (the works of El Nino1). I have never seen a pairing that is more purely a construct of the fangirl imagination... and what a limited imagination it is, my friends. I need not belabor the details-- either you already know, or you don't want to.
[I hate Ike/Pit, too, but for slightly different reasons... though I believe Ike/Pit is very much a "replacement" for Marth/Roy now that SSBB has deprived Roy's fangirls of their beloved.]
OK. I'm done. For now.
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no subject
Date: 2010-03-21 03:11 am (UTC)Just to underline your point: when I read this, I stared at the screen and wondered what on earth that had to do with either Roy or Marth, when neither of them show either tendency even in jest.
I'm sure Roy must've made a joke... somewhere. Kind of? His intro to Elphin, maybe. Uh. How about when FE11!Marth backtalks his strategist? Hmm.
This is a lost cause.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-21 12:27 pm (UTC)Yeah. There was a great set of essays in the GW fandom that described how original fandom conceptions, based on fragmentary canon (partial fansubs) led to 'fic "classics" that in turn influenced a second generation of stories, that influenced a third, and that by the time the entire series reached worldwide distribution, the fandom stereotypes were so entrenched that it was an uphill battle for the canon characterizations and anyone who wrote them. That's exactly what happened with Marth and Roy-- I have seen all of ONE 'fic in the SSB section featuring a recognizable FE11!Marth, because canon arrived so late to the party that nobody cares. The lone standout was written by a male writer, too, which doesn't surprise me.