mark_asphodel (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mark_asphodel) wrote2012-08-03 08:50 pm
mark_asphodel) wrote2012-08-03 08:50 pm
Entry tags:
- au,
- fanfiction,
- fe11,
- fe4,
- fe8,
- fe9,
- fire emblem
Modern AUs: You'd Hate Your Favorite Character
I was gonna do that fanfic meme that's been going around but my answers are boring and evasive.
On an IM the other night, Ammie dropped a revelation: Soren, in an "our world" modern AU, would vote Republican.
You can agree or disagree or debate the merits of the label, but she had a point. At least in Fire Emblem fandom, many of the characters if transplanted to our own world and time would probably not be people that internet scribblers (who often hit the "progressive" label on one point or another) tend to associate with. A lot of 'em would vote Republican, or Tory, or Conservative... though perhaps they'd better fit the party labels of a previous generation than, say, anything to do with the Tea Party.
Who are these people? Nobles and those who serve them. The privileged. Representatives of and defenders of the social structure. Not being a racist, or not being in favor of child sacrifice, doesn't make one not a small-c conservative. But how many Fire Emblem playable characters even fit a small-d democrat or small-r republican label? Dude... these are monarchists, for the most part. Oligarchs. Theocrats. Like... no.
If anything, many of these playables are genuine conservative characters putting down a rebellion from fringe elements, and their victory is The Old Status Quo, But Better. And IMO, a modern AU that doesn't GET that is likely to be off-base if it tries to deal with the characters in any kind of political/ideological sense. C'mon, picture AU Seth-- he's a career military man. Maybe not the most religious guy around in an orthodox sense (re: Natasha supports), but otherwise he's all about orthodox values. Country. King. Law and Order. And, yes, God. He probably votes to keep cops on the streets and keep teenagers from getting out of hand. He probably votes to keep marijuana illegal and the penalties for trafficking stiff. He probably thinks "marriage" consists of man + woman and wouldn't see anything wrong with DADT. He's against animal abuse but not much concerned about animal rights. He eats meat and doesn't think much about where his produce is "sourced" or whether or not the stuff's organic (but GM crops sound suspicious to him). He wouldn't want his tax dollars going toward Piss Christ.
(I think the God part may be hard to incorporate unless a character is a pre-packaged cleric because many writers are not religiously orthodox-- or they're coming at faith from something other than the pseudo-Catholic structure of most Fire Emblem worlds. Ordinary characters in FE do not have personal relationships with their Savior; that's limited to the elite, the elect. And you're not it unless your name is Claude, or Micaiah, or some other Chosen specimen.)
I mean, I could see Pent as a fringe-progressive guy, but even so he's coming at the system from a position fairly high within it-- NOT from the outside. He's anything but disenfranchised. Levin... well, in his bard phase Levin strikes me someone who could be tweaked into 1950s/1960s radical, but even so it's all relative, given that you'd be comparing him to power-elite military types like Sigurd and Cuan. Seriously, if Jugdral were 1960s America, I'm pretty sure Sigurd and Friends would be hawks on 'Nam. Supporters of civil rights for 'colored people'? Yeah, maybe. But hawks on 'Nam. Likewise, Levin could be spun into a plausibly Jewish subversive (how appropriate to the era and its fears), compared to WASP-y Grandbellian elites and the oh-so-Irish Lenster crew, and all of those carry their own weight in the cultural context. Catholics then were not viewed as Catholics are now-- and that's just one detail.
(Alvis is the reformer who wants a world where people aren't persecuted for the circumstances of their birth and bloodline. Think about that one long and hard in the context of a modern-world AU. Ow.)
Stefan? Now, he's gonna mix stuff up. Oh yes. Tellius probably offers the widest range of slots to be adequately filled in an AU-- Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, and Other. And then someone like Marth just kind of doesn't work at all IMO in a modern AU, unless you make him something as exalted and untouchable in the bubble of the AU world as he is in his own. Paul McCartney or Yuri Gagarin, take your pick.
But if he could exist in 1960s America, Marth would probably also be a hawk on 'Nam. And maybe support bombing Cambodia. Just sayin'.
On an IM the other night, Ammie dropped a revelation: Soren, in an "our world" modern AU, would vote Republican.
You can agree or disagree or debate the merits of the label, but she had a point. At least in Fire Emblem fandom, many of the characters if transplanted to our own world and time would probably not be people that internet scribblers (who often hit the "progressive" label on one point or another) tend to associate with. A lot of 'em would vote Republican, or Tory, or Conservative... though perhaps they'd better fit the party labels of a previous generation than, say, anything to do with the Tea Party.
Who are these people? Nobles and those who serve them. The privileged. Representatives of and defenders of the social structure. Not being a racist, or not being in favor of child sacrifice, doesn't make one not a small-c conservative. But how many Fire Emblem playable characters even fit a small-d democrat or small-r republican label? Dude... these are monarchists, for the most part. Oligarchs. Theocrats. Like... no.
If anything, many of these playables are genuine conservative characters putting down a rebellion from fringe elements, and their victory is The Old Status Quo, But Better. And IMO, a modern AU that doesn't GET that is likely to be off-base if it tries to deal with the characters in any kind of political/ideological sense. C'mon, picture AU Seth-- he's a career military man. Maybe not the most religious guy around in an orthodox sense (re: Natasha supports), but otherwise he's all about orthodox values. Country. King. Law and Order. And, yes, God. He probably votes to keep cops on the streets and keep teenagers from getting out of hand. He probably votes to keep marijuana illegal and the penalties for trafficking stiff. He probably thinks "marriage" consists of man + woman and wouldn't see anything wrong with DADT. He's against animal abuse but not much concerned about animal rights. He eats meat and doesn't think much about where his produce is "sourced" or whether or not the stuff's organic (but GM crops sound suspicious to him). He wouldn't want his tax dollars going toward Piss Christ.
(I think the God part may be hard to incorporate unless a character is a pre-packaged cleric because many writers are not religiously orthodox-- or they're coming at faith from something other than the pseudo-Catholic structure of most Fire Emblem worlds. Ordinary characters in FE do not have personal relationships with their Savior; that's limited to the elite, the elect. And you're not it unless your name is Claude, or Micaiah, or some other Chosen specimen.)
I mean, I could see Pent as a fringe-progressive guy, but even so he's coming at the system from a position fairly high within it-- NOT from the outside. He's anything but disenfranchised. Levin... well, in his bard phase Levin strikes me someone who could be tweaked into 1950s/1960s radical, but even so it's all relative, given that you'd be comparing him to power-elite military types like Sigurd and Cuan. Seriously, if Jugdral were 1960s America, I'm pretty sure Sigurd and Friends would be hawks on 'Nam. Supporters of civil rights for 'colored people'? Yeah, maybe. But hawks on 'Nam. Likewise, Levin could be spun into a plausibly Jewish subversive (how appropriate to the era and its fears), compared to WASP-y Grandbellian elites and the oh-so-Irish Lenster crew, and all of those carry their own weight in the cultural context. Catholics then were not viewed as Catholics are now-- and that's just one detail.
(Alvis is the reformer who wants a world where people aren't persecuted for the circumstances of their birth and bloodline. Think about that one long and hard in the context of a modern-world AU. Ow.)
Stefan? Now, he's gonna mix stuff up. Oh yes. Tellius probably offers the widest range of slots to be adequately filled in an AU-- Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, and Other. And then someone like Marth just kind of doesn't work at all IMO in a modern AU, unless you make him something as exalted and untouchable in the bubble of the AU world as he is in his own. Paul McCartney or Yuri Gagarin, take your pick.
But if he could exist in 1960s America, Marth would probably also be a hawk on 'Nam. And maybe support bombing Cambodia. Just sayin'.
Re: probably derailing even further oops
Right. And you have clerics like Malliesia who seem to be clerics for no reason other than someone trained them to be, someone like Aideen who IMO did take vows for the wrong reasons, or at least reasons that weren't totally right, and then the troubadour/Valkyrie chicks who can use healing magic despite being interested in just about anything BUT religion.
Part of the deal with L'Arachel is that she's had a charmed life (except for the parents being dead). Her beliefs are never challenged. Things always go her way. How would L'Arachel react to something truly faith-challenging, like the death of her own child? IDK. Whereas a character like Leaf, whose entire life just consists of being kicked, and kicked, and failure... canon indicates that he and the people around him really do believe in the power of the gods that appear to keep letting them down. They believe that the god Noba will look out for them even when everything around them is being destroyed, including Noba's own representatives on earth. That's the kind of faith that I think a lot of writers might be uncomfortable with if they tried to translate it into our world, because it's an alien kind of mindset[*].
* I don't personally believe in gods but that doesn't mean I haven't thought long and hard about facets of the issue. If anything, I stopped being a Catholic in part because I take Catholicism too seriously to pretend to be one!
I could see Knoll as an atheist, but like you said, hard to really convert that to a modern-day AU.
After the game, yeah. Hell, Knoll's looked into the thing that formed the core of his life's work and watched as RenaisTwins killed it.
Religion was a Big Deal
Religion was a bigger part of civic life, but there seems to have always been a good number of people who didn't care about orthodox church rules and carried on with their own practices. We have evidence ranging from Ancient Egypt to 1300s Italy that, regardless of what the Pharoah or Pope said, a lot of people just said "whatever." But you can bet they showed up to the festivals!
I'd like to think no good FE character would hit their wife/husband or treat their children badly, but it makes you wonder.
Well, we do have Levin, the ultimate non-villainous terrible father. Even if he wasn't himself at the time. Other than that, and a few other cases that can be perceived as withholding/neglectful, I'm pretty sure we don't have any closet wife-beaters or child-abusers on the side of the Good Guys. [That's one issue I have with certain manga adaptions-- in anime and manga, a boy slapping a bitchy girl across the face can be seen as appropriate or even funny, and no way in hell does that translate to SRS Story without it looking like abuse.]
Re: probably derailing even further oops
fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuckdammit has that been written before? cause you know I love to write the sappiest shit. I would write it.
Re: probably derailing even further oops
you should write that because I would read the shit out of that.
...*rolls back out*
Re: probably derailing even further oops
Well if you read the shit out of it THEN IT WOULD HAVE TO BE SHIT-FREE AFTERWARD. Whoa. *mind blown*
Actually, the idea is very tempting. L'Arachel reminds me a lot of Pollyanna, just saying. I bet L'Arachel plays The Glad Game.
Shit now I can't picture her as anyone but Pollyanna. :////
Re: probably derailing even further oops
Re: probably derailing even further oops
/runs away
Re: probably derailing even further oops
Re: probably derailing even further oops