Stolen Tumblr Meme
Apr. 23rd, 2013 06:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mark_asphodelStolen from half the f-list on tumbr.
Send me a character name and I’ll tell you:
My first impressions of them.
What I think of their design.
What I think of their role in the story.
What I think of their interactions with other characters.
My favorite aspect of the character overall.
What could have been improved or changed with regards to the character.
My number one wish for this character.
Be prepared for a long blank stare if you ask me about, say, Fiona, though.
Send me a character name and I’ll tell you:
My first impressions of them.
What I think of their design.
What I think of their role in the story.
What I think of their interactions with other characters.
My favorite aspect of the character overall.
What could have been improved or changed with regards to the character.
My number one wish for this character.
Be prepared for a long blank stare if you ask me about, say, Fiona, though.
no subject
Date: 2013-04-26 05:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-26 03:45 pm (UTC)OK, gonna test out the new comments feature with this one.
Elphin...
My feelings are kind of complicated and they've changed in the last 15-odd months as my perception of FE6 has shifted. Before I actually sat down and played FE4 and tried FE5 and picked over the script with a fine-tooth comb for each of them, I didn't realize how much FE6 and FE7 plundered from Jugdral. FE6 itself was pretty a pretty transparent reworking of FE1 (not a slam against it-- that's just what they did with everything from Roy's starting party to the reintroduction of the adorable dragon loli), but in terms of character development there are many things that I originally gave credit to FE6, for either introducing or deepening in ways the series hadn't previously tried, and I can't give FE6 credit for innovation there anymore.
(And my opinion of FE7 has sunk like a stone. Like. A. Stone. It's a well-made game but things that merely troubled me about it before are flat-out distasteful to me now.)
So I'm giving a very different answer on Elphin than I would've a year and change ago.
My first impressions of them.
I was introduced to Elphin through Shimizu Hitomi's fanfic and I found him very intriguing. I like the political dimensions to FE and he was pretty much All That.
What I think of their design.
I do not like Fire Emblem's insipid long-haired blond(e)s. His outfit and accessories are fine but he's about as sexy to me as a dead fish. So I find it hard to get really excited about shipping him because Elphin himself is just... UGH.
What I think of their role in the story.
It's cool. I suppose the Etrurian-corruption angle is the most interesting part of FE6 to me. As a variant on the wandering-prince dealie and the dodgy tactician dealie Elphin stands toe-to-toe with the best the franchise has to offer.
What I think of their interactions with other characters.
He's very cute with Fae. I used to ship with him with Cecilia and Perceval in an OT3 (again, I got into him through fanfic) but IDK.
It's more that I like and appreciate the whole dynamic between Elphin and his peeps on an abstract level without really feeling it. I see good things there but I don't really get excited about it. I already got excited about those things in some other game that is not FE6.
My favorite aspect of the character overall.
I guess that he does wrap several aspects I like-- politics, wandering prince, moral ambiguity-- into one package.
What could have been improved or changed with regards to the character.
More sexy? IDK. Also it seems an oversight to make him, uh, optional. Really? REALLY, IS?
My number one wish for this character.
Man's got his work cut out for him. I sure hope he succeeds.
no subject
Date: 2013-04-27 06:04 am (UTC)I'm curious about what elements in particular were carried over from the Jugdral games. Obviously I like FE6, so it'd be nice to know what to look for when I tackle Jugdral (especially if I have to do a lot of reading between the lines). Also FWIW I think there's a difference between saying that you like the way a game handled an element and claiming that the game marked the introduction of that element. Like supports existed in a prototypical form in Jugdral, but like many inventions people mistake their standardized introduction as their actual birth.
From what I've played of FE1 (9-ish chapters in last I checked?) a lot of the surface elements-- like the recruitment order-- played out the same, but I wasn't catching a lot of glaring character similarities beyond that. It always looked to me more like an homage-- I mean, they were invoking that with the TV spot as well, so it makes sense as a way to hook players with an element of nostalgia.
no subject
Date: 2013-04-27 06:06 pm (UTC)Well, take one thing-- FE6!Karel and Fir. Good stuff, right? I like FE6!Karel, everyone likes FE6!Karel. Then I got a load of Galzus and Mareeta. In light of them, everything about Fir and Karel in FE6 came across to me as a case of "Hey, that worked! Let's do it again! Let's not even change their haircolor any so that everyone who played Thracia knows exactly what we're doing here."
Clarine looked a lot less interesting to me after being exposed to Raquesis, because that's pretty clearly the foundation Clarine was built on. The Elibe troubadours in general were diminished to me after seeing the first run of troubadour-- they might have more dialogue and development, but there's something a little bit off about it to me (not that I ever thought Priscilla was handled well in any event). Once more it seemed like a blatant case of "Hey, let's do that one again!" There's not so much a sense of that in the first five games, where the "archetypes" aren't really set in stone and some barely even show up. FE6 ended up being the installment that bound up a lot of FE tropes in one place and made them tropes instead of scattershot elements that might exist in one game or two out of the original five.
ETA: And since we mentioned him on the other thread, I would be remiss not to mention Narcian, who is so transparently based off FE5's vain, pathetic, sketchy, cowardly, dirty-tactics, throwing-female-generals-in-jail Kempf that it's basically like the sales pitch went "If you loved to hate Kempf in Thracia 776, you'll be besides yourself with glee over Narcian!"
The Archanea homage is one thing and mostly it works. FE6!Marcus has the purple Jeigan armor but he does a good job of being his own character. Wolt may be filling Gordin's role but he is most certainly not Gordin. Ditto for Miledy and Minerva. Ditto for Nyna and Guinevere. But the stuff that seemed copped not from FE1 but from the previous two games felt a little more crass after I realized what the source material was, in almost the same way that shoehorning retroactive tropes into FE12 seems crass to me. Less about acknowledging the influence of a classic and more like "Let's pull that chain again!"