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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.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-30 03:43 pm (UTC)Hey, you know, while we're at it, I think it'd be awesome to have Shy Guy playable. Let's cut Mario!
Really, what.
I think a lot of it is just the slash mentality. There's a big difference between writing a real homosexual relationship and writing what most fans see "slash" as being. I derped about it somewhere re:Raven/Lucius, too. Instead of being true to the characters and the situations, writers mush one into the stereotypical "female" role and the other into an exaggerated "male" role - almost always based on who is smaller/prettier/more woobie. I think it's more a sign of ignorance than anything else. Doing that, to me, and putting that emphasis on who sticks what where, it doesn't say you love the couple, or the characters, or even that you're okay with gay people in general. It says you're a lazy writer who'd rather swap a couple names in the cliche BL manga and call it a day than actually spend some time thinking about the characters you supposedly love enough to write about.
I think it creates a stigma, too - like you mentioned, the inevitable haaaate that comes with Ike/Soren. I don't see it yet, but if I do? I'm not sure I can like it without being affected by the terrible, terrible stuff out there and feeling less comfortable with it.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-30 03:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-30 04:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-31 07:41 pm (UTC)Father (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5155079/1/Father) - Serious Business Fanfiction that makes an important statement regarding some of these things here discussed, but not centrally Ike/Soren.
Scarf (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6540505/1/With_a_Scarf_to_Shield_You) - Manna calls this "slice of life", which it is, more or less. It's vaguely nonshippy Modern AU fluff or something.
Honeymoon (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6592786/1/Honeymoon) - This is just pairing fic for the sake of being pairing fic but it's still better than 95% of Ike/Soren fic. Modern AU. It has married men in it, if that happens to tie into your remark upon wondering what canon-approved m/m looks like. I feel the need to flail around and make elaborate gestures about how it was ultimately written as fanservice for Measured, however, and so you shouldn't expect too much.
The rest are various types of parody, insignificant, trope subversion, or awful. Please don't touch anything before October 07. My snooty little elitist heart couldn't stand that. And don't go fishing for Devotion please.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 02:35 am (UTC)I prefer to stay away from modern AUs until I get a feel for what characters should be like in their "home setting," so I'll save those for later.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 04:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-30 03:57 pm (UTC)It was not a good time to be a Marth fan in SSB-land. In between the Roy crazies and the Lyn crazies... well, it never made any sense. One, Marth starred in the best-selling FE game ever. Two, Marth's popularity because of this is the only reason there was FE content in Melee to begin with (and Roy was included after the fact as an advertisement for FE6). Three, Marth was AWESOME in Melee. Four, because Marth and Roy won people over internationally by being cute and interesting and awesome, FE7 got an international release and fans got to meet their precious Lyn.
So, yeah. Dropping Marth to include Lyn or Hector or Ephraim or Micaiah or SIGURD (whut?) in his stead just wasn't on the cards. But the haaaaaaaate circa late '07 and early '08 was a thing to behold.
Cemented my view that FE fans were dicks, I'll tell you.
[Personal view-- if they did have a third FE rep in SSB, it should've been Ephraim or Hector, because the game has enough sword users. And Micaiah in practice might've just been another Zelda.]
or even that you're okay with gay people in general.
I doubt most of these writers can ever have spent time around a gay couple.
The thing is, some series play to that sort of BL stereotype. They GIVE you the manly seme and the precious woobie uke. But to take Soren and force him into it... ARGH.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-30 04:18 pm (UTC)And I can't say I'd have a real choice for a third, just because the idea of Marth and Ephraim kicking the crap out of each other is amusing like nothing else. Heh.
BUT ZOMG SOREN HAS LONG HAIR AND MESSED UP BACKSTORY, AND IKE HAS MUSCLES, IT'S ALL RIGHT THERE!!
Yeah, I really doubt it, myself. And it is a shame. I really like Soren so far; he's just delightfully ornery. But if he were some crying uke? I'd hate him.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-30 04:55 pm (UTC)Heh. My main for Brawl is Goggles Pikachu. My favorite of Marth's alt costumes is the pretty aqua FE3-inspired one. As for Ike, I love that blue-and-white outfit that allegedly is meant to evoke Sigurd.
the idea of Marth and Ephraim kicking the crap out of each other is amusing like nothing else.
I lean towards Hector, because yeah, FE7 was Very Important to the worldwide fanbase and an axe user would be cool. But he'd be another slow heavy dude, I'm sure, whereas Ephraim might add a little diversity to the gameplay-- not a lightweight, not slow as molasses. And his reach with Siegmund could really be phenomenal.
And yeah, Eph and Marth having a knockdown, drag-out fight in 3D would be funny as hell.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-30 08:40 pm (UTC)Also, my favorite Marth costume is the white and/or black one. Uhm. *is weird*