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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.
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no subject
Date: 2011-01-30 04:19 pm (UTC)That's probably because it's the same fans writing the fics. In fact, I came from the Harry Potter fandom, though I didn't write fic for it -- there was no need with so much readily available, and I was very shy at the time (this would have been way back in 2003). Also, I read het fics, not slash, though I promise you it was as active and crazed a segment of fandom as any other.
I have a lot of similar reservations about slash fic. Most of the time one of the characters is turned into a girl. Also they tend to represent a female fantasy about male character and relationships and oftentimes these fantasies come at the expense of characterization. Of course that can happen with het fic as well, for example bad boy fics where a villain or unpleasant character is miraculously converted into a caring, thoughtful man by the power of lurrrv.
We all have our little quirks that draw us to read and/or write certain kinds of stories. What bothers me is when characterization is sacrificed in order to fit characters into a desired mold. But then it's fandom and there's always going to be a lot of badfic out there no matter what sort of story one looks for.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-30 04:40 pm (UTC)Actually, Part III is going to touch upon a subset of HP fandom that remains frothing crazy years after the release of Deathly Hallows.
Of course that can happen with het fic as well, for example bad boy fics where a villain or unpleasant character is miraculously converted into a caring, thoughtful man by the power of lurrrv.
Indeed. Though I see that more in book fandom (HP, again) than anime/manga fandom.
there's always going to be a lot of badfic out there no matter what sort of story one looks for.
The puzzle, to me, is not so much "why badfic?" as "why do certain types of badfic dominate a fandom?" And why does the downward spiral feel so depressingly familiar in so many cases?
no subject
Date: 2011-01-30 08:53 pm (UTC)I wish I could answer that. Or that I even knew the whole answer.
I guess something is popular because it fills a gap. For example, the only manly-looking/acting dude + long-haired girly-looking man pairing in FE? Was really Raven/Lucius. And it was popular and done really badly for a while.
Ike/Soren was done in a game where it was pretty much easily picked up on as a canon possibility-- especially when 10 came out. (Which I see, now.)
So it's the Seth/Eirika of Tellius, I guess. Except it's two men. And fandom, who mostly comes from fandoms like Harry Potter and animuuuuu~~~ (/sarcasm), only knows stereotypes.
This is why slash has always bothered me. "ALL FOR TEH YAOI!!!1" is annoying. It'd be like announcing to the world how great het is. Uhm. Meaningful relationships are great. Shoving two characters together because they're hot or you wanna see A top B (and being 110% serious about it) is stupid. Period. We're open for crack and I don't mind off-the-wall pairings at all. But a lot of shippers-- and I mean people who literally and seriously ship pairings and announce it and wave banners and sail ships-- have no basis behind why they like what they like. I don't care if it's POLITICAL INTRIGUE. It should be SOMETHING.
That and I think most slash fandom is kind of insulting to gay people? IDK. I'm not gay. But if I was a gay guy, I'd probably be like :/ Wow, these people are writing nonexistent fantasy. It's like a lot of smut out there? It's totally fantasy. Just because it sounds good on paper doesn't mean it makes any sense In the Real World. :| It's kind of like when people talk about how hot Asian chicks are. If I was an Asian chick, I'd tell them to get a fucking life. That's creepy. I feel it's kinda wrong to put any group of people into a labeled box like that. Or to assume anything about a person just because they're [homosexual, heterosexual, transsexual, blahblah whatever here].
I mean, obviously we all have kinks/things we like. (Men in uniform, anyone?! Or hell, women in uniforms are sexy too!) But IDK. Not everyone in uniform is sexy. Not all Asian chicks are hot. Not all gay guys are feminine, and not all gay women are manly. C'mon. SERIOUSLY, FANDOM. With all the homosexuals in fandom, I don't see why more people don't realize this? IDK maybe I'm kinda like...confused about this whole thing. I have no idea why people write such animu~~~ stereotypical bad-smut-esque slash fic. Aren't the character interactions the exciting part? And if Soren isn't SOREN. Then Ike/Soren sucks.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-31 10:54 pm (UTC)Unless you crackship Ogma/Navarre. Which I have seen. But, yes, good point.
"ALL FOR TEH YAOI!!!1" is annoying.
Well, things kind of... changed. Back in the day (late 90s), you would have mainstream anime with a canonical yaoi pairing, only the femmy one was dubbed with a female voice for English release. Or some ridiculous excuse would be inserted into the dubbed storyline to explain how lovers were really sisters, or cousins, or whatever. And this sort of thing made yaoi and yuri shippers genuinely political-- we wanted the real thing available, not these ridiculous hackjobs. It was defense of the actual source material.
[Imagine Soren as a girl. Or Sister Lucy instead of Lucius.]
Well, now the floodgates are open and most of that stuff is available, but instead of being militant about seeing the actual canon relationship portrayed as-is, I see a lot of people being militant about same-sex crackships. Which are, at the end of the day, still crackships and no better or more valid than any kind of crack. And whining because canon won't validate your pet crackship (as happened with a bunch of Harry Potter slash fans) is just... stupid.
That and I think most slash fandom is kind of insulting to gay people?
I have never asked my gay friends about this... I ought to, some day. But it's certainly not realistic, and the feminization and infantilization of male characters is definitely insulting.
And if Soren isn't SOREN. Then Ike/Soren sucks.
Word.