Jugdral Wibbles

 I'm attempting to fill one of the one-word prompts per day, preferably in order of request.  If you want to request anything, the post is here.

I didn't volunteer to write for Jugdral on this one, even though I cop to being one of the people who complains that there's not enough Jugdral 'fic out there.  I seem to have a mental block on writing anything for it, outside of making Leaf "the squishy one" in various mash-ups.  And I tell myself that it's because the game scripts are too involved to grasp without actually playing through them, that playing them will take up too much time, that if I really want to write Jugdral with the depth that kittykatloren  and sarajayechan  bring to it then I really ought to read the mangas... all of them.  And I tell myself that the people who love Jugdral really love it and I need to do it justice if I ever to take a stab at it.

Basically, I tell myself that the canon is too intimidating and I'm not ready for it.

I think I'm lying to myself.  It's because I don't like most of the characters.  I don't want to write them.

The situations that these characters are in, particularly with the generational themes playing out, made the characters initially seem awesome to me.  You don't have to manufacture darkness, or invent parental losses or sibling separation or any other plot points o'drama.  It's there.  The parent-child relationships have a built-in resonance that you have to kind of work at for most second-gen Elibe characters, IMO.  And the happy endings and the reunions and such are there, too, especially if you decide to run with some of the more cracked-out things that the designers came up with, like resurrecting Tiltyu after keeping her on ice for a while.  Great material.

I still don't like most of these characters.  I want to kick a lot of them, including Tiltyu.  And Sylvia.  And others, like Claude and Eltoshan, really... don't interest me on anything beyond an abstract level.  My single favorite first-gen character in FE4 is probably Levin, and I like him best as Tactician!Levin... who isn't really Levin.  But he's cool.  I think the Thracia/Lenster gang and the Silesians are the only characters I actually like.

Basically, if these characters weren't in such complex and "dramatic" situations, I think I'd like them even less than I do.  Like some of the FE7 characters I don't care for, it's the existence of a canonical destiny for them that gives them the apparent weight they have.  Out of context, they just don't do it for me.

Argue away, 'cause I want to like them and write for them.  I'm just... so not feeling the love for these people.

GameFaqs is good for something.

So, I popped in on the SSB4 board to LOL at the silliness (Guys?  Pent will not be playable in this game.  I promise.), and somebody suggested Caeda as a playable character, and the inevitable sparring over Shiida vs Sheeda vs Caeda came up.

And then someone claimed that her name was an adaptation of the Irish name Sioda... which apparently is a genuine Irish name that is also rendered as "Sheeda."  It means "silken-haired" and there once was some hero called Sheeda MacNamara who was 'excellent with the spear.' This particular Sheeda was a guy, btw-- Sioda/Sheeda is a boy's name.

So, yes, she's faux-Irish.  But her father's still faux-Welsh, so Talys is just all pan-Celticy... which is pretty much what I thought.

No, I never did look it up before, because 'Sheeda' always struck me as a silly-ass name.  Still sounds like a genie in a bottle to me.

-x-

Someone else suggested Camus as a playable character in the new game.  That's an idea I can actually get behind.  He's got a lance.  A BIG lance.  And he's hot.  And he's in a lot of FE games.  So, yes.  Camus for SSB4!  I should make a little banner or something...

-x-

I still want a female FE rep, and I'd rather have her not use a sword, kthx.