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mark_asphodel Part Two: When Pairings Eat A Fandom
I missed a key development in the Tellius fandom-- the release of FE10 and the havoc it wrought-- because I was at that time lazing around in the SSB fandom. My main points of contact with actual Fire Emblem fans during that time were the incursions of butthurt Roy fans and batshit insane Lyn fans, none of whom were really good ambassadors for the FE community. (Long story short: if you think Lyn "deserved" to be in SSB:B as something "better than" an assist trophy, OK. You think Marth should've been cut to make room for her, GFY and you need a history lesson.)
Not that the post-FE10 Ike/Soren wank didn't hit SSB:B fandom. There was lots of handwringing and denial and flaming, not least because a lot of players and writers seem to have blissfully assumed that the Nintendo gods had, with Ike's inclusion, finally given them a straight (read: manly) rep from Fire Emblem to play with. So the question of Soren-or-Ranulf went down like shards of broken glass. I was mostly confused; I figured the initial reports of Ike's FE10 ending were lies, simply because I'd seen lies and hoaxes of that nature so many times across various fandoms. Also, my spotty knowledge of FE9 led me to believe that Ike/Elincia was where things were going, because, again-- it's Fire Emblem, and that's how the games always go, right?
[SSB:B fandom also had some vocal Ike/Lethe fans to add to the confusion.]
By the time I meandered back into actual FE fandom toward the beginning of 2009, Ike/Soren was well past the point of controversy (obviously some people are still spazzing out over it in various communities, but COME ON NOW.) And it was everywhere.
And it was mostly terrible. I swear that I've seen Soren written better in a handful of SSB-themed stories wherein he was his actual prickly, snarky, unsociable self. I haven't finished FE9, but any amount of contact with canon!Soren puts the lie to his standard 'fic portrayal. Hell, flipping through the game manual indicates that something is amiss with fanfic!Soren. I read a lot of Ike/Soren for a while because I was interested in what the depiction of a canon-approved m/m pairing would look like via fandom, and to my chagrin it was the same garbage as any other yaoi pairing: manly!seme, weepy!uke. Same worn-out tropes as used by Harry Potter fans, or Gundam Wing fans, or any other fanbase obsessed with pairing pretty boys.
Given I like canon!Soren, this was painful. Still is.
Ike/Soren turned into a hot-button issue for the fandom, as demonstrated by the wank that even mentioning it will net you on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
emblanon and elsewhere. Some of this may be because it's two dudes together. Some of it may be because it's just so popular. But I don't think the reaction would be quite as extreme if so many of the stories weren't hack jobs composed of anime cliches and terrible characterizations, with or without random fangirl Japanese thrown in. I get the impression that Tellius writers who aren't on the Ike/Soren bandwagon feel overshadowed, or at the very least outnumbered, by I/S and its attendant wank, and I can't blame them. Maybe it'll pass in time, the way the era of bad Kent/Sain stories faded, but here we are in 2011, so who knows?
I guess the real question is, why do people who have presumably played the games write Soren in this way? Did they just see some fanart over at DA and decide to 'fic it? Are they just focusing on a couple of emotional moments in the games (which, as I understand it, are important because they are NOT the norm) and discarding all the rest of it? Or is it another closed circle, a feedback loop wherein writers are basing their entire perception of a character or pairing on the way it's done in other fanfics? I suspect the last comes heavily into play.
The other question is, why does nobody care about poor Ranulf?
Stay tuned if you like for Part III: Canon, What Canon? In the meantime, recs for good Ike/Soren stories are appreciated, and feel free to pimp your own.
I missed a key development in the Tellius fandom-- the release of FE10 and the havoc it wrought-- because I was at that time lazing around in the SSB fandom. My main points of contact with actual Fire Emblem fans during that time were the incursions of butthurt Roy fans and batshit insane Lyn fans, none of whom were really good ambassadors for the FE community. (Long story short: if you think Lyn "deserved" to be in SSB:B as something "better than" an assist trophy, OK. You think Marth should've been cut to make room for her, GFY and you need a history lesson.)
Not that the post-FE10 Ike/Soren wank didn't hit SSB:B fandom. There was lots of handwringing and denial and flaming, not least because a lot of players and writers seem to have blissfully assumed that the Nintendo gods had, with Ike's inclusion, finally given them a straight (read: manly) rep from Fire Emblem to play with. So the question of Soren-or-Ranulf went down like shards of broken glass. I was mostly confused; I figured the initial reports of Ike's FE10 ending were lies, simply because I'd seen lies and hoaxes of that nature so many times across various fandoms. Also, my spotty knowledge of FE9 led me to believe that Ike/Elincia was where things were going, because, again-- it's Fire Emblem, and that's how the games always go, right?
[SSB:B fandom also had some vocal Ike/Lethe fans to add to the confusion.]
By the time I meandered back into actual FE fandom toward the beginning of 2009, Ike/Soren was well past the point of controversy (obviously some people are still spazzing out over it in various communities, but COME ON NOW.) And it was everywhere.
And it was mostly terrible. I swear that I've seen Soren written better in a handful of SSB-themed stories wherein he was his actual prickly, snarky, unsociable self. I haven't finished FE9, but any amount of contact with canon!Soren puts the lie to his standard 'fic portrayal. Hell, flipping through the game manual indicates that something is amiss with fanfic!Soren. I read a lot of Ike/Soren for a while because I was interested in what the depiction of a canon-approved m/m pairing would look like via fandom, and to my chagrin it was the same garbage as any other yaoi pairing: manly!seme, weepy!uke. Same worn-out tropes as used by Harry Potter fans, or Gundam Wing fans, or any other fanbase obsessed with pairing pretty boys.
Given I like canon!Soren, this was painful. Still is.
Ike/Soren turned into a hot-button issue for the fandom, as demonstrated by the wank that even mentioning it will net you on
emblanon and elsewhere. Some of this may be because it's two dudes together. Some of it may be because it's just so popular. But I don't think the reaction would be quite as extreme if so many of the stories weren't hack jobs composed of anime cliches and terrible characterizations, with or without random fangirl Japanese thrown in. I get the impression that Tellius writers who aren't on the Ike/Soren bandwagon feel overshadowed, or at the very least outnumbered, by I/S and its attendant wank, and I can't blame them. Maybe it'll pass in time, the way the era of bad Kent/Sain stories faded, but here we are in 2011, so who knows?I guess the real question is, why do people who have presumably played the games write Soren in this way? Did they just see some fanart over at DA and decide to 'fic it? Are they just focusing on a couple of emotional moments in the games (which, as I understand it, are important because they are NOT the norm) and discarding all the rest of it? Or is it another closed circle, a feedback loop wherein writers are basing their entire perception of a character or pairing on the way it's done in other fanfics? I suspect the last comes heavily into play.
The other question is, why does nobody care about poor Ranulf?
Stay tuned if you like for Part III: Canon, What Canon? In the meantime, recs for good Ike/Soren stories are appreciated, and feel free to pimp your own.
