Regarding Seth
Apr. 11th, 2012 03:58 pmI wasn't going to touch this subject, but damned if it doesn't keep coming up in different forms of media.
I like Seth as a unit and as a character. Like him a lot, in an "I can potentially identify with this guy kind of way." And from the beginning, I kind of connected him with Cain in the way that Cain's shown in FE3, where he's not Red Cav anymore but is instead a trusted senior knight/advisor, a right-hand-man, the guy Marth leaves in charge of Altea when Marth goes off chasing trouble. [Orson is the Abel to Seth's Cain, with even worse results than Abel saw in FE3.]
But I stopped writing and exploring him and basically just left him alone for a while, because... reasons. The things I liked about Seth, and found interesting about him, didn't seem to be the reasons that fandom overall was interested in him, plus I caught a general sense that Seth was overemphasized into a "semi-protagonist"[*]-- placed above his station, so to speak. And, since I liked Seth but didn't LOVE him, it wasn't worth the grief. I could just write about Cain or some other character that filled that same niche to me.
Part of it is, I think, the essential difference in the knight/Lord dynamic between Eirika's Route and Ephraim's. Eirika/Seth is a problematic pairing to me, but I really dig the interaction between reckless Ephraim and cool-headed Seth... and not in a sexual way (no thanks).
Japanese FE fandom had a very useful tip on understanding Seth, knight of Renais. Ammie helped translate it (and much else) for me.
( In which we are NOT touching the psychosexual angles of FE8 )
I like Seth as a unit and as a character. Like him a lot, in an "I can potentially identify with this guy kind of way." And from the beginning, I kind of connected him with Cain in the way that Cain's shown in FE3, where he's not Red Cav anymore but is instead a trusted senior knight/advisor, a right-hand-man, the guy Marth leaves in charge of Altea when Marth goes off chasing trouble. [Orson is the Abel to Seth's Cain, with even worse results than Abel saw in FE3.]
But I stopped writing and exploring him and basically just left him alone for a while, because... reasons. The things I liked about Seth, and found interesting about him, didn't seem to be the reasons that fandom overall was interested in him, plus I caught a general sense that Seth was overemphasized into a "semi-protagonist"[*]-- placed above his station, so to speak. And, since I liked Seth but didn't LOVE him, it wasn't worth the grief. I could just write about Cain or some other character that filled that same niche to me.
Part of it is, I think, the essential difference in the knight/Lord dynamic between Eirika's Route and Ephraim's. Eirika/Seth is a problematic pairing to me, but I really dig the interaction between reckless Ephraim and cool-headed Seth... and not in a sexual way (no thanks).
Japanese FE fandom had a very useful tip on understanding Seth, knight of Renais. Ammie helped translate it (and much else) for me.
( In which we are NOT touching the psychosexual angles of FE8 )