Archetype Fatigue
Apr. 26th, 2013 10:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mark_asphodelEh. This post was originally about something else altogether but I think this is a better issue than what I was originally banging on about re: "archetypes" in FE-land. OK, so we've all seen fans going on about how they like X type of character. Maybe it's mashing all alleged Devoted Knights[*] together so that Kent equals Seth equals Geoffrey equals whoever the hell, or maybe it's glomping all Angsty Wyvern Riders collectively[**], or all "Navarres" or all the "Julians" or... eh, whatever. Y'all know what I'm talking about.
And that, at least in 'fic, leads to the characters in question being blurred and mushed and just not themselves. I'll never forget the 'fic I read that was allegedly about Navarre wherein the author deliberately used the characterization of FE7!Karel for Navarre because they knew Karel and didn't know anything in-depth about Navarre himself. OK, we've talked about this phenomenon more than a few times.
But, actually... isn't the opposite kind of the case, if you're actually into the characters and not just the niche they fill? I think what I've found, personally, is that if I latch onto a particular Pegasus Sister Trio, or a particular Angsty Wyvern-Riding Turncoat, and so on, then the other ones of that type just don't DO it for me. I mean, I might have some (or a lot) favorable bias toward them, but it's just not the same intensity of feeling. And the clone characters may be good characters, but they're just a little too similar along Axis X and a yet a little too different along Axis Y when compared to the character I actually love.
It's like the Dick York/Dick Sargent thing in Bewitched, in a sense. Yeah, superficial resemblance. Yeah, playing the role and reciting the dialogue. But I liked Dick York better, dammit, so please bring Original Darrin back and send this impostor packing, stat. And some people, somewhere, liked Dick Sargent better.These people are wrong, but whatever.
But I think this gets to the heart of why I just can't work up any enthusiasm for, say, the FE6 Pegasus Trio sisters or other characters who strike me as too much the New Darrin when held up against a character I actually like. I lovelovelove Palla-Catria-and-Est. Something about the FE6 girls just feels kind of hollow to me, whereas the FE7 Peggies have moved enough along the "same" and "different" axes that I like them a good deal better[***], and then by FE8 we still have three Peggies but only Syrene's hairstyle hews all that close to the template.
(And you can argue that green-haired sisters Syrene and Vanessa are evoking Mahnya and Fury instead, but they are most certainly NOT replicants of Mahnya and Fury. Syrene and Vanessa are, um, Syrene and Vanessa.)
Anyway, I don't know if anyone else gets their hackles up when confronted with the New Darrin phenomenon in Fire Emblem, but I'd sure like to hear it if you do. Because it does seem to explain why I just can't warm up to some characters even though, working off a characterization/archetype checklist, I "should" be crazy about them.
Note: This is one criticism I cannot level against FE13. Chrom and Cordelia aside, I don't think there was anyone in FE13 who really set off my New Darrin radar. And if there was, I've mercifully forgotten it.
* Usually "all the ones they know about," as in nothing pre-FE7 and nothing from the Archanea reboots. This is probably a good thing, at least for me.
** Ditto. They're not gushing over Dean.
*** Mostly Farina's doing.
And that, at least in 'fic, leads to the characters in question being blurred and mushed and just not themselves. I'll never forget the 'fic I read that was allegedly about Navarre wherein the author deliberately used the characterization of FE7!Karel for Navarre because they knew Karel and didn't know anything in-depth about Navarre himself. OK, we've talked about this phenomenon more than a few times.
But, actually... isn't the opposite kind of the case, if you're actually into the characters and not just the niche they fill? I think what I've found, personally, is that if I latch onto a particular Pegasus Sister Trio, or a particular Angsty Wyvern-Riding Turncoat, and so on, then the other ones of that type just don't DO it for me. I mean, I might have some (or a lot) favorable bias toward them, but it's just not the same intensity of feeling. And the clone characters may be good characters, but they're just a little too similar along Axis X and a yet a little too different along Axis Y when compared to the character I actually love.
It's like the Dick York/Dick Sargent thing in Bewitched, in a sense. Yeah, superficial resemblance. Yeah, playing the role and reciting the dialogue. But I liked Dick York better, dammit, so please bring Original Darrin back and send this impostor packing, stat. And some people, somewhere, liked Dick Sargent better.
But I think this gets to the heart of why I just can't work up any enthusiasm for, say, the FE6 Pegasus Trio sisters or other characters who strike me as too much the New Darrin when held up against a character I actually like. I lovelovelove Palla-Catria-and-Est. Something about the FE6 girls just feels kind of hollow to me, whereas the FE7 Peggies have moved enough along the "same" and "different" axes that I like them a good deal better[***], and then by FE8 we still have three Peggies but only Syrene's hairstyle hews all that close to the template.
(And you can argue that green-haired sisters Syrene and Vanessa are evoking Mahnya and Fury instead, but they are most certainly NOT replicants of Mahnya and Fury. Syrene and Vanessa are, um, Syrene and Vanessa.)
Anyway, I don't know if anyone else gets their hackles up when confronted with the New Darrin phenomenon in Fire Emblem, but I'd sure like to hear it if you do. Because it does seem to explain why I just can't warm up to some characters even though, working off a characterization/archetype checklist, I "should" be crazy about them.
Note: This is one criticism I cannot level against FE13. Chrom and Cordelia aside, I don't think there was anyone in FE13 who really set off my New Darrin radar. And if there was, I've mercifully forgotten it.
* Usually "all the ones they know about," as in nothing pre-FE7 and nothing from the Archanea reboots. This is probably a good thing, at least for me.
** Ditto. They're not gushing over Dean.
*** Mostly Farina's doing.
no subject
Date: 2013-04-27 06:39 pm (UTC)Wouldn't want to have coffee with either of them, though :P
As for nuances, I think it's kind of a cyclical thing? I mean, I definitely know 6 and 8 much more quickly than the others, because I've picked over them for fic/meta, but I also kind of feel like (not that you were insinuating it but others have) it can be offputting to say people just see more to like because they've looked at it longer - there has to be something there to make you like it in the first place, after all, right? And while fandom is at least 20% reading into stuff, sometimes people get snarky like "it's only good if you make stuff up", and I feel like that can be unfair. There's "give this support a look" or "check out this line of script", and then there's "read this meta and that one and then read this fanfic and this obscure bit of interview", you know? Again not saying you were saying that, just something kind of related.
no subject
Date: 2013-04-27 06:51 pm (UTC)Yeah. No matter how much time and effort I've spent with dippy little Malliesia in FE3, I'll happily admit that Serra is a better, richer, deeper more engaging take on the character. But I will also dig on my heels on the position that Serra is Malliesia 2.0, though Serra is to the original what my '13 Ford Focus is compared to my '95 Ford Escort.
no subject
Date: 2013-04-28 01:07 am (UTC)I was just saying that seeing that nuance is something that naturally springs out of to spending time with the material. If you've gone over a script-- especially one of the scanter or more shoddily translated ones-- one time, you're going to miss things. Whereas someone who's gone in trying to figure things about about the characters and they've read or played through it a bunch of times is going to see stuff between the lines a lot more. I like to give analysis the benefit of the doubt; for the most part, it's grounded understandably in the source material, even if it might be taken to conclusions that weren't built into the original game.
I think that gets at what you were saying?