#I am digging through my old FFVII fanfic

[zencribnotes]

Fanfic Questions Meme: 3, 7, 20, 51

3). What is the best fandom you’ve ever been involved in?

This is a little tough considering that I kinda don’t really talk or interact with fandom anymore outside of making fanfic or engaging in convos on dreamwidth or some friends on tumblr, so I haven’t personally ever been in like... the “community.” One is that it’s overwhelming and it’s only so much interaction on Skype or Tumblr before the conversation just becomes party white noise while I occupy myself with food or drink. In fact, I think I am/was 99% that person trying to edge into conversations like a kid at the big table (only now I’m older). I was as really awkward kid trying to hedge into the big kids’ table.

But I think that, by virtue of its diversity of titles and age range, the FF community has a lot of good interaction and discussion topics because of being able to compare lore and similarity of themes in a way that keeps for better tracking (and good fanfic). I think that FFXII fandom made the most interesting fic and the FFVII fandom made the most emotionally cathartic ones, for better or worse. The dedicated FF 1-6 people are really dedicated and FFX fandom makes really great lore discussion too. FF comm also has that timeless feel where it’s not really congested with new memetic fandom themes of the day or other TV Tropic vibes, so it always has something for everyone. 

I also like Tales Of fandom because of similar reasons and also its cultivationjoying  the silly things from the games  because the games  all indulge in silly and slice-of-life interactions for character development and expansion which I think allows for more creative flexibility. 

This is obviously barring intense shipping debates. 

7). NOTPS are something that I tend to fluctuate in feeling as I grow older or re-tread stuff, but from FF it’s definitely Kain/Lightning due to the frustrating way Dissidia 012 wrote Lightning in it and her interaction to Kain, and while I understand why it’s mega popular, I have to deal with measure of bubbling resentment in the face of its plethora of fan content as a result of my biased feels. 

I also generally don’t like ships with large age gaps (although Fire Emblem Echoes has definitely made me rethink on that for one pairing), so Auron/Rikku wasn’t really a big thing for me. Mostly because I don’t see it and also because i was 16 when I played FFX and that feeling of squick is not leaving me anytime soon. 

Due to the massive shipping options in the Fire Emblem games, I fear showing my NOTPS might unleash a box of wasps for those who take offense (which I understand as I am viscerally wont to do sometimes), so it’s gonna be the ones whose writing are similar to the above NOTP reasons. 

But in games where the main character is a customizable semi-bland personality self-insert, I actually generally don’t go into Main Character/Other character a lot because I like party members with other party members generally. So actually, I don’t dig into Hawke/Anyone, Shepherd/Anyone, or so on a whole lot. Although this is the opposite for me in the Persona series. However, Male Human MC in DAO gets the distinction of not wanting to ship him to any lady. Mostly because of the relationship dialogue at times. 

Foe-shipping is def not a thing for me. Not unless the foe becomes like Vegeta and becomes this weird ally-rival. 

20). Can’t believe I’m hankering for a 17-year old teenager getting with a 34-year old man in Fire Emblem Echoes. This is like the bane of games featuring teen heroes, so I guess I gotta make age AUs where one is slightly aged up or aged down while keeping that generational thing. Or do that (age)/2 + 7  au. 

I also can’t believe that Dissidia 012 made me think of Laguna/Lightning as a thing. Then again, Raine is kinda like a less intense Lightning without other baggage. 

51). rant time: I can’t believe I am so into a Nintendo game with such fierce devotion as Fire Emblem starting with Awakening and Fates, with the most thought process in the latter, and yet one storyline in the latter is frustrating trash which left me with like a giant bitter aftertaste towards half the entire character roster as a result of that first impression. It’s like a big love/hate divide towards it and yet I can’t stop thinking about it. Why do I have to do the legwork to make the canon better than it is, and also why does it just highlight the weakness of the creators of the fiction to the point that it makes me want to disavow the whole story. And it’s not just this one thing, it’s also a lot of other things. Like, why do we in fanfic land have to do this level of Death of the Author for the sake of better interaction with the text, when sometimes it just shows the weakness of the people who made it. Or even the cultural differences, since in like anime and Japanese video games we have to unpack a text through a different cultural lens which, honestly, 8/10 people just don’t get or if they do just revert to Western dialogue to describe it. Which, y’know, in some situations is a valid route to go through if we go into academic postcolonial theory, but how many times in the decade and a half of my life on the internet where people are being schooled into the basics of anime themes and symbolism and pop culture?  

[skyandcigarettes]

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