mark_asphodel (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mark_asphodel) wrote2011-03-17 12:56 pm
mark_asphodel) wrote2011-03-17 12:56 pm
Entry tags:
Fic Update and Notes: "Asylum" (Complete)
I was supposed to go grocery shopping last night, but I finished this instead. Ouch.
Sometimes finishing a story imparts a real sense of "Oh, good, that's done." This is one of those times-- I'm not already manically flipping through the WIP pile to see what I need to hit next. This is likely good for my own peace of mind.
I had a number of reasons for writing this particular take on Elice and Marth.
1) Staying in a converted "state hospital" for the night causes IDEAS.
2) Have always been a sucker for "siblings in creepy large house" stories (though the house here isn't the creepy part), family vacations gone weird, relatives locked in the attic, that kind of thing.
3) FE12 bothers me on a number of levels.
4) I had an assortment of little unfinished stories featuring the siblings between the wars, including one that touched on one of the points in this-- in a world where the gods are allegedly active and register their approval and disapproval of human events, what did King Cornelius do that warranted being deep-sixed along with the rest of his generation? Why wasn't he worthy of the task put in front of him? I don't have a definitive answer to this (though I do have some suspicions), but I suspect his children would at least be bothered by the question. It wants asking.
And so this distinctly non-medieval, vaguely Victorian story came about. All kinds of things came in the package-- family dynamics, relations between nobles and servants, and a couple of different creep factors. Some of these factors stem from Elice, a POV character who imagines herself to be more analytical and objective than she actually is... and who pretends to be rather less damaged than she actually is.
Anyway, "Asylum" was constructed on a couple of different levels:
1) Two wealthy orphaned siblings, both on the verge of adulthood, spend a summer in the country home that belonged to their dead parents, and things are vaguely weird and uncomfortable. As I said, I'm a sucker for that kind of set-up.
1A) The catch here being that these aren't two ordinary rich brats... they're the actual representatives of authority and justice in their country.
2) Mommy!Elice wants to take her brother out of the spotlight for a time while they get themselves back together, and uses the damage in the capital as a plausible excuse to drag him there.
2A) She's already figured out that her brother's psyche isn't really in order, and is using the "retreat" as means of both observing how he behaves in a pleasant, low-stress environment and of figuring out a way to fix him up enough to put him back on center stage.
2B) Elice fancies herself quite the armchair alienist, making it all the more ironic that she refuses to deal with the fact that she was held captive by a truly nasty character for three long years.
3) The kids both seem to connect with their mother more than their father, from what little information we have in canon. Their father's death came as a shock (Cornelius was a big awesome warrior king dude), but it seems to hit them more on a conceptual level than a personal level.
3A) I refuse to buy into abusive!Cornelius as seen in the anime, or disapproving!Cornelius as seen in the manga, but I do suspect he was neither particularly genial or 100% squeaky-clean. Better than the standards of his age, I'm sure, but those standards appear to be low indeed.
3B) I think Elice was at least clued in that there was some Serious Trouble going down before the fall of Altea in 602. She was the one who activated the contigency plans, after all. By the looks of things, Marth was totally blindsided by it all. Sure, he knew there was a war going on, but the conception of and consequences of defeat weren't real to him. (He was at most fourteen and can be excused in this.)
Oh, yes. "Chalfont" is the name of the, er, "funny farm" in the secret backward message in Pink Floyd's The Wall.
The teensy hint of Elice/Cain sort of came out of nowhere, but I've seen fanart for the pairing and I confess that I quite like it.
Sometimes finishing a story imparts a real sense of "Oh, good, that's done." This is one of those times-- I'm not already manically flipping through the WIP pile to see what I need to hit next. This is likely good for my own peace of mind.
I had a number of reasons for writing this particular take on Elice and Marth.
1) Staying in a converted "state hospital" for the night causes IDEAS.
2) Have always been a sucker for "siblings in creepy large house" stories (though the house here isn't the creepy part), family vacations gone weird, relatives locked in the attic, that kind of thing.
3) FE12 bothers me on a number of levels.
4) I had an assortment of little unfinished stories featuring the siblings between the wars, including one that touched on one of the points in this-- in a world where the gods are allegedly active and register their approval and disapproval of human events, what did King Cornelius do that warranted being deep-sixed along with the rest of his generation? Why wasn't he worthy of the task put in front of him? I don't have a definitive answer to this (though I do have some suspicions), but I suspect his children would at least be bothered by the question. It wants asking.
And so this distinctly non-medieval, vaguely Victorian story came about. All kinds of things came in the package-- family dynamics, relations between nobles and servants, and a couple of different creep factors. Some of these factors stem from Elice, a POV character who imagines herself to be more analytical and objective than she actually is... and who pretends to be rather less damaged than she actually is.
Anyway, "Asylum" was constructed on a couple of different levels:
1) Two wealthy orphaned siblings, both on the verge of adulthood, spend a summer in the country home that belonged to their dead parents, and things are vaguely weird and uncomfortable. As I said, I'm a sucker for that kind of set-up.
1A) The catch here being that these aren't two ordinary rich brats... they're the actual representatives of authority and justice in their country.
2) Mommy!Elice wants to take her brother out of the spotlight for a time while they get themselves back together, and uses the damage in the capital as a plausible excuse to drag him there.
2A) She's already figured out that her brother's psyche isn't really in order, and is using the "retreat" as means of both observing how he behaves in a pleasant, low-stress environment and of figuring out a way to fix him up enough to put him back on center stage.
2B) Elice fancies herself quite the armchair alienist, making it all the more ironic that she refuses to deal with the fact that she was held captive by a truly nasty character for three long years.
3) The kids both seem to connect with their mother more than their father, from what little information we have in canon. Their father's death came as a shock (Cornelius was a big awesome warrior king dude), but it seems to hit them more on a conceptual level than a personal level.
3A) I refuse to buy into abusive!Cornelius as seen in the anime, or disapproving!Cornelius as seen in the manga, but I do suspect he was neither particularly genial or 100% squeaky-clean. Better than the standards of his age, I'm sure, but those standards appear to be low indeed.
3B) I think Elice was at least clued in that there was some Serious Trouble going down before the fall of Altea in 602. She was the one who activated the contigency plans, after all. By the looks of things, Marth was totally blindsided by it all. Sure, he knew there was a war going on, but the conception of and consequences of defeat weren't real to him. (He was at most fourteen and can be excused in this.)
Oh, yes. "Chalfont" is the name of the, er, "funny farm" in the secret backward message in Pink Floyd's The Wall.
The teensy hint of Elice/Cain sort of came out of nowhere, but I've seen fanart for the pairing and I confess that I quite like it.
no subject
I think I love you for it.
The teensy hint of Elice/Cain sort of came out of nowhere, but I've seen fanart for the pairing and I confess that I quite like it.
Here, let me join you in that corner. DEFINITELY BETTER THAN ELICE/MERRIC.
re: Cornelius. This is actually an interesting idea, one I never even thought of! (Poor Cornelius, he usually gets ignored :() But it does make sense. And I always figured Marth was close to his mother, especially since his father was a warrior and always galavanting off pwning people, so he was often left with his mother and his sister.
no subject
It was plausible enough as a name for a manor house (sounded kinda like Chambord and Fontainebleau), but yeah, I was tipping my hand there.
DEFINITELY BETTER THAN ELICE/MERRIC.
I like it better than most of Cain's other straight options. He's a super-loyal knight, she's a princess who doesn't mind marrying down...
especially since his father was a warrior and always galavanting off pwning people
Well, and here's the other thing about Cornelius. His main ally (other than the King of Talys)? Scum. Not exactly secretive about it, either. The suzerain he rushed to defend? Scum.
I'm not saying Cornelius sympathized with letting Macedon starve, or with the Aurelian slaveholder bloc. Maybe the dialogue upon departure was something like, "Fuckdammit Liza, I can't stand the man but he's my liege lord, and breaking my vows will jeopardize everything for our children!" Hell, maybe he figured his loyalty to the Archanean king would mean scoring the #1 marriage prize on the continent for his own son.
Or maybe he was so deep in the system that he didn't notice much of anything wrong, and it's a damned good thing that he didn't have much influence on Marth.
no subject
maybe he figured his loyalty to the Archanean king would mean scoring the #1 marriage prize on the continent for his own son.
lol look at how that worked out.
It's certainly interesting, that's for sure. ...I might have to use one of those in a fic because now I'm getting all sorts of ideas for it.