Horrors, Cosmic and Otherwise

[mark_asphodel]

Where the HELL did all that snow come from?  I was caught totally off-guard by that and it sure altered the course of my day.

Have been reading H.P. Lovecraft over the last few days, plus I watched Downfall the other night.  Many weird ideas ensued.  Note to Magvel fans: a little eldritch cosmic horror would be totally appropriate for the Demon King and his works, yes?  As for the other... well, we'll see.

Started writing again after a considerable drought; unfortunately it's all new stuff instead of any WIPs that need the "P" part kicked into gear.  One's an FE3 piece (which might evolve into FE12 depending on the amount of wangst), the other is a Forde-and-Franz story called "Brothers in Arms" (yes, after the Dire Straits album).

sarajayechan  has a nice discussion of FE12 going on-- if you missed the wailing and gnashing of teeth last summer, this is a good place to catch up.  I love her ideas re: Michalis.  Also, her description of FE12!Marth as "bad fanfic Eliwood meets anime!Marth" is a perfect way of conveying why FE12 made me want to take him out behind the barn and just shoot him.  

Comments

[sailorvfan10.livejournal.com]

Also, her description of FE12!Marth as "bad fanfic Eliwood meets anime!Marth" is a perfect way of conveying why FE12 made me want to take him out behind the barn and just shoot him.
I say we make a firing squad. I'd participate! Seriously. I wanted to throttle anime!Marth and with FE12!Marth I just want to put him out of his misery. YOU ARE NOT THE MARTH I FELL IN LOVE WITH. I fell in love with Melee!Marth actually, but then I played his games and I loved him even more, and then FE11 came out and I was IN LOVE BIG TIME. He's my favourite.

I wrote a nice comment over there that sums up my feelings about FE12 nicely. Very nicely. I should hand it out as a flyer or something.

[mark-asphodel.livejournal.com]

Yeah, your bullet points laid it all out very well.

FE12!Marth I just want to put him out of his misery.

My #1 problem with him is that simply he doesn't appear to be coherent as a character. It's not just a bad characterization, it's a totally WTF one that gives no sense of him as an actual personality. Yes, a fully-translated (or adapted) script might fix that.

I guess if people leaked selections from Shadow Dragon to the fanbase without putting them in context, we'd have found certain scenes OOC and not-Marth. But there are so many small changes in FE12 that add up to @#$%. Cutting the line about wanting the Altean villages to make peace with one another? That in itself is just... so... weird.

[sailorvfan10.livejournal.com]

I'm glad my sleep deprived rant/essay/whatever was actually coherent XD

Yeah, I just...don't understand what IS was going for. You want Marth to be batshit? Fine, but why cut a scene in which he BSODs? You want Marth to not be batshit? Fine, but why cut a line that represents Marth's diplomaticness with wanting the two Altean villages to make nice with each other? What were they smoking/thinking/drinking when they put this game together? It's like taking different pieces of fabric, sewing it together, and calling it a dress! It's just...not coherent.

I hope to find out what the hell is going on with Marth when I translate FE12. I just... I don't know.

[korsriddare.livejournal.com]

Have been reading H.P. Lovecraft over the last few days, plus I watched Downfall the other night. Many weird ideas ensued. Note to Magvel fans: a little eldritch cosmic horror would be totally appropriate for the Demon King and his works, yes?

You mean something like 'An evil more primal than the Demon King has been awakened. As Magvel faces destruction, Eirika and Seth struggle to survive. Eirika, Seth, various others.' ?

I really should finish up chapter 2... But yes, inspired by the Cthulu Mythos in general.

[mark-asphodel.livejournal.com]

Heh!

I wasn't thinking in terms of a sequel as in the way that DK and his minions are described. They're portrayed as horrible in fanfiction, but usually it's a straightforward kind of horror-- as straightforward as Gorgons and three-headed-dogs can be, anyway. There's not so much the sense of something deeply, disturbingly Other, something at the very edge of what humans can process with their senses and put words to. And given what they're dealing with, a whiff of the kind of otherwordly grotesquerie of Lovecraft would make a lot of sense.

I really should finish up chapter 2

Guess I need to read Chapter 1!

[mark-asphodel.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I just...don't understand what IS was going for

The thing that would've made the most sense, IMO (and based on the reactions of people to various playthroughs), is that the changes in FE11, consistently applied, would have resulted in an adult!Marth who was (almost?) every bit as corruptible as Hardin. Which is a total shift from FE3. That is the sense some players on SF got from FE12 anyway (all the parallels drawn between Marth and Hardin), and would fit nicely with Gharnef's outta-nowhere assertion that Marth is a hypocrite who deserves what Gharnef plans to inflict on him.

[FE villains aren't usually completely offbase when they're castigating the heroes, after all-- there tends to be a grain or two of truth to the ranting.]

But instead we get a mix of Woobie!Marth, CrystalDragonJesus!Marth, and the calm and fairly bland Marth who dishes out exposition for MyUnit's benefit. No sense making.

[korsriddare.livejournal.com]

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5681651/1/The_End_of_Days

Will probably need to edit chapter 1 once the rest are written.

But I agree, though I have nothing against the straightforward kind of horror that DK is shown as.

My starting point actually came from an observation - For a continent that is more or less a single landmass (as compared to Elibe), the desert region is quite the odd one out.

That led to a few (admittedly stretching it) thoughts.

1. What if the desert was not natural in the making?

2. What if the DK was simply a by-product of something in the past?

3. What if the sacred stones that so conveniently fell into the hands of the sacred stone nation founders were the product of a past civilization?

4. What happened to that civilization?

[korsriddare.livejournal.com]

Also, you should read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Colder_War

What if the cold war occurred in a world where cosmic horrors are present?

[mark-asphodel.livejournal.com]

What if the sacred stones that so conveniently fell into the hands of the sacred stone nation founders were the product of a past civilization?

Ah! My headcanon has them pegged as Sacred Spheres of Archanea, with Magvel being either the result of some merger between Archanea and Valencia or a place where survivors from those civilizations ended up after some apocalyptic event.

But Elder God worshippers is a nice explanation, too. :)

[korsriddare.livejournal.com]

Not worshippers, but a civilization that fought against a cosmic horror.

[korsriddare.livejournal.com]

Well, there were worshippers, but that is sort of the norm against an eldritch abomination, haha.

[sailorvfan10.livejournal.com]

the changes in FE11, consistently applied, would have resulted in an adult!Marth who was (almost?) every bit as corruptible as Hardin.
That's the Marth I feel should be in FE12. It also shows that Marth, though he's Our Hero, is deeply flawed, and that makes him HUMAN and RELATABLE. And I actually want to give a crap about him. I don't care about woobies, or CrystalDragonJesuses, or calm and bland. I want the Marth I saw in FE11 where he is a psychologically interesting character and you're sitting there waiting for him to BSOD and it would, to me, be absolutely beautiful.

But this Marth in FE12 makes me want to punch things. Most likely him and MyUnit.

[writerawakened.livejournal.com]

Ooh, new stuff! :D Sounds cool.

At some point I want to leave you reviews for your FE11 stuff, but unfortunately between writing and getting all my class reading done I haven't had time--yet.

[samuraiter.livejournal.com]

A good notion, but the Demon King, to me, seems too ... logical, perhaps, too human-ly rational to fit the Elder God classification.

[mark-asphodel.livejournal.com]

I'll be ready when you are. :)

[mark-asphodel.livejournal.com]

Oh, the idea isn't quite so much that the Demon King is an Elder God sort of being as that his creatures and his manifestation would carry that same sort of sensory-bending horror to them.

Not just, you know, "Oh hay, a couple of three-headed dogs and a big-ass spider are coming our way!" I'm as big an advocate for "realism" in battles as you'll see 'round these parts, but maybe realism is not quite what Dark Creatures demand.

Then again, Three Kerchiefs suggests you have the horror vibe down.