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Fic Update: Namesake
Jul. 14th, 2010 12:47 am Some time ago, I sent by my superiors to a "nibble 'n' gab" conference thingy. Alone. Before the conference began, I was standing around in the main hall, looking around at all the well-dressed people expertly balancing their danishes and coffee cups, feeling awkward and unfashionable and one muscle twitch away from spilling/breaking something. And I wondered if these people had all been taught to handle themselves in public or if I was just inherently godawful clumsy.
This came out of that experience. It's a little exploration of Alm after he finds out who he really is, and as such is chock-full of spoilers for FE2. And FE3, considering the whole Zeke thing. It very much holds the essential lightheartedness of Valencia up against the oh-god-make-it-stop bleakness of Archanea circa FE3. [Given the apparently gonzo nature of FE12, that all may be "rebooted"... we'll see!] But Valencia just seems like such a nice place, full of family and friends and happy couples. There's really nothing like it until Magvel, which really IS the "spiritual successor" of Valencia in many ways despite wholesale plunder from the Archanea storybox.
I like Alm. He is so deliberately and drastically different from Marth that it's obvious that Intelligent Systems wasn't planning to make a series of cookie-cutter games starring Generic Lord Number Whatever. They built Valencia from the ground up as its own entity, which is really quite fascinating. And no, Alm isn't much like Ephraim, either. Ephraim knows he's the @#$%ing Prince of Renais and he's badass and he wants to skewer him some dark creatures, dammit. (Sorry. Was playing the Phantom Ship chapter tonight.) Alm is just... Alm. That's enough.
Though what really made me love Alm was watching him fight. No dainty fencing moves here-- hack'n'slash all the way, like a Mercenary-turned-Hero. And he actually wears, you know, full-body protective gear.
Dammit. NES graphics just take me back to a happy place in time....
This came out of that experience. It's a little exploration of Alm after he finds out who he really is, and as such is chock-full of spoilers for FE2. And FE3, considering the whole Zeke thing. It very much holds the essential lightheartedness of Valencia up against the oh-god-make-it-stop bleakness of Archanea circa FE3. [Given the apparently gonzo nature of FE12, that all may be "rebooted"... we'll see!] But Valencia just seems like such a nice place, full of family and friends and happy couples. There's really nothing like it until Magvel, which really IS the "spiritual successor" of Valencia in many ways despite wholesale plunder from the Archanea storybox.
I like Alm. He is so deliberately and drastically different from Marth that it's obvious that Intelligent Systems wasn't planning to make a series of cookie-cutter games starring Generic Lord Number Whatever. They built Valencia from the ground up as its own entity, which is really quite fascinating. And no, Alm isn't much like Ephraim, either. Ephraim knows he's the @#$%ing Prince of Renais and he's badass and he wants to skewer him some dark creatures, dammit. (Sorry. Was playing the Phantom Ship chapter tonight.) Alm is just... Alm. That's enough.
Though what really made me love Alm was watching him fight. No dainty fencing moves here-- hack'n'slash all the way, like a Mercenary-turned-Hero. And he actually wears, you know, full-body protective gear.
Dammit. NES graphics just take me back to a happy place in time....
