Remix is up!

[quinara]

As the subject has somewhat spoiled, Remix is up! All I can say is read, guess my fic and win (for this certain quality of winning) a ficlet from me and check out Thus I Do Abide (The Foggy with a Chance Remix) - which takes my Waiting in the Fog from summer_of_spike yeeeeaaars ago and reworks it into the current comics canon - ie. the Spike and Dru reunion. It's subtle and smooth - with a bombshell. :D

Also, though, meme:

Name a character in any of my fandoms and I'll tell you 3-4 things about them from my personal fanon-take on said character.

Personal fanon's fun, right? I count fandoms as anything I've written in or vidded, which I think does cover most bases, though I have also been watching a lot of Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood recently and think that counts too. Or just ask whatever, heh.

(Must sleeps now.)

Comments

[stultiloquentia]

Tell me how your Roy shakes out, now that you've seen more of him. :)

[quinara]

Oh, Roy, I'm not quite sure why everybody loves you.

1. Whatever his sexuality, Roy sees sex and relationships as fundamentally entwined with his duty and ambition. He loves and has sex with people he thinks he should, and has been living that way so long that doing so is real for him and how he functions.

2. He understands burning things as a personal emotional release, and has sleepless nights worrying what this means about him in relation to the Ishbalan genocide and Kimblee.

3. In Roy's eyes, his weakest moment was not when he nearly destroyed Envy, but when he allowed himself the half-second fantasy that the van Maria Ross turned up in actually was full of ice cream, with him just a child daydreaming in a playground. Dwelling in the past is always worse than any sort of action for the future.

4. When the whole Bradley mess is over, Roy makes sure he becomes king, where the main thing history remembers him for doing is separating state and military rule (partly for himself, partly because he believes in it and partly because he knows Olivier has no ambition outside the military and trusts her more at his side than anywhere else). He's not the last to enter battle, but he's the last monarch to wear military title while he's on the throne. He's married eventually for some reason of politics, quite possibly to May Chang.

Er... I meant this to be more positive??

[stultiloquentia]

Oh, Roy, I'm not quite sure why everybody loves you.

Ah, the irresistible smell of manpain, wafting from the pages!

As for this particular meme, I was interested in your afaik utterly unique take on the dude, and how it had developed since I last checked in.

I meant this to be more positive??

Don't care about "positive"; I care about "interesting". And your answers are. #3 is brilliant.

[quinara]

Ah, the irresistible smell of manpain, wafting from the pages!

Of course, the manpain - oh, how it always blindsides me. I think it's that and shipper fic where the two parties never actually talk that are the two secret loves of fandom always to elude me.

And hee! I think I still merrily read Roy as ace, but I don't think the term exists in Amestris, and I don't think Roy would ever think to realise he could think of things in terms of orientation.

Don't care about "positive"; I care about "interesting".

*salutes you*

[stultiloquentia]

Of course, the manpain - oh, how it always blindsides me.

To be fair to Roy, one of the reasons I reasons I like him is that he takes neither more nor less responsibility for events than he should. He spends too little screen time standing about on rooftops, brooding about how it's All About Him, to be a proper king of pain—though he does own a damned fine billowy coat.

shipper fic where the two parties never actually talk

I AM SO WITH YOU THERE. Especially when the never-actually-talking is how the author gets her conflict. "Oh, Poohbear, you have betrayed me!" "Actually, no, there's a perfectly legitimate explanation for that thing you saw." "Don't wanna hear it! First we must have eight-and-a-half chapters of angst!"

[quinara]

To be fair to Roy, one of the reasons I reasons I like him is that he takes neither more nor less responsibility for events than he should. He spends too little screen time standing about on rooftops, brooding about how it's All About Him, to be a proper king of pain—though he does own a damned fine billowy coat.

It's true and almost certainly a point in his favour that he doesn't pronounce himself as Manpain Man - and I don't dislike him, but for me he is definitely more of a scratchy-interesting part of the ensemble rather than my darling love about whom I could read forever. (I do however quite strongly dislike Edward Elric, it turns out. There's a fairly respectable tradition of me disliking the protagonist in things I like, though, so I'm not worrying about it too much. But oh dear do I find him brittle, flip and selfish. :/ )

Especially when the never-actually-talking is how the author gets her conflict. "Oh, Poohbear, you have betrayed me!" "Actually, no, there's a perfectly legitimate explanation for that thing you saw." "Don't wanna hear it! First we must have eight-and-a-half chapters of angst!"

YES. And then Poohbear and Piglet don't see each other for days/weeks at a time, but are still apparently experiencing the throes of some great romance... How?! This is why I am always in favour of plots with monsters and all that crap - if you concretise your relationship issues then your ship can solve it together, with plenty of conversations along the way, rather than leaving me (if not the general audience) with the impression that you ship your protagonist more with their BFF than with their romantic partner. /end proclaiming

[stultiloquentia]

I do however quite strongly dislike Edward Elric

Oh no! I adore the little shit. But we can debate about him another day, if we feel like it. For now, tell me who your favourites are. Olivier, I'm gonna hazard?

I want to Scotch Tape your whole Pooh and Piglet paragraph to fandom's forehead.

[quinara]

Favourites! Olivier, blatantly, because I am nothing if not predictable (friendshipped with Izumi, whom otherwise I don't find that exciting on her own). I also ended up with a major soft spot for Bradley's wife, even if I can't remember her name, oddly enough, and definitely little Selim (something blatantly goes twitchy with him later on in life, or he breaks into the government and finds files on himself or something, after which Mrs. Bradley comes into her own telling everyone to get stuffed). I love the homunculi, strangely, especially Greed (and Ling Yao! I like him too) and Pride and Envy (after the first take down) and Sloth (in an abstract sort of way I found him slightly tragic, but I could hardly read an epic about him). I also cannot help but love May Chang and Xiao Mei, because she's cute as a button and gets power from being cute as a button, rather than having a split personality that allows her to be super cute and weak, and then become Bitch Queen of Power, as per your fantasies, Joss Whedon.

One thing I have to say I love about FMA (and which I think tends to be more common in Japanese things) is that both the children and the adults are allowed to be competent. It's different qualities of competence, naturally, but there isn't any real sense of an insurmountable generational divide with children and adults almost at war with one another. It's nice!

[stultiloquentia]

definitely little Selim (something blatantly goes twitchy with him later on in life, or he breaks into the government and finds files on himself

There should be Selim futurefic. I mean, clearly.

the homunculi

Woo, I love them, too! Lust's early death makes me cranky, because I found her pretty fascinating. Unlike the other kids, she didn't appear lustful at all, just an object of lust. Which makes no sense. I suppose there's not much they could have explored in a shonen manga, but I found even the basics problematic. Why was she the only one who was female-shaped? I suppose you could argue that Father got his ideas about the seven sins from Hoho, and Lust was what Hoho thought about when he thought about lust, but mostly I think it was just...lack of thought about it atall.

I do enjoy the homunculi's spectacular death scenes. Greed, aieee! Dying on the words, "It is enough."

May Chang and Xiao Mei, because she's cute as a button and gets power from being cute as a button, rather than having a split personality that allows her to be super cute and weak, and then become Bitch Queen of Power, as per your fantasies, Joss Whedon.

Oh, lordy, that's such an awesome point about both May and Joss. It's a reason I like Winry, too, actually. She still falls into the "girl waiting at home" trope a little more readily than I'd love, but what she does manage is to have a life, and a job, and friends, while she's at it. She's strong-willed, yet cute skirt-wearing, and kickass without being a warrior chick.

there isn't any real sense of an insurmountable generational divide with children and adults almost at war with one another

Having cut my teeth on Buffy, you bet I noticed this one—with amazement and gratitude! The moment that drove it home (one of my favourites in the series) was after Izumi, Olivier and co. had taken down Sloth, when the two women turned to each other and said, "The kids are still fighting down there. How can we, the grown-ups, go take naps while that's happening?" I was, like, "Dude, Izumi is the anti-Watchers' Council!"

[quinara]

Woo, I love them, too! Lust's early death makes me cranky, because I found her pretty fascinating.

Yay!! I was annoyed by Lust's death too, and totally agree that she seemed to be a lust object more than lustful - but then I also found my self a little confused by the way she didn't seem to inspire that much lust either. She had that guy from Mustang's gang (was that Havoc??), but no one else seemed particularly interested. I found myself mostly thinking that we never got to know her before she died, which seemed sad. :( (With the names, I do actually tend to wonder whether it was supposed to be immediately clear that the homunculi were the seven deadly sins, since their names were turned into the English and so not immediately apparent in the Japanese. Pride, Envy and Greed didn't seem to really show their sins until later on in their stories, so I feel like maybe coming to it from an anglophone perspective puts a stronger emphasis on their concepts than might actually be there. Or at least I think lust might have underpinned Lust's character in a way that never got to be seen.)

It's a reason I like Winry, too, actually. She still falls into the "girl waiting at home" trope a little more readily than I'd love, but what she does manage is to have a life, and a job, and friends, while she's at it. She's strong-willed, yet cute skirt-wearing, and kickass without being a warrior chick.

Ack, Winry; I don't know what to do with her. She does seem to have a life, but after she left Wotsit Town of Automail Joy I found it really hard to work out what she was doing with it. Especially when her dialogue seemed to drift into nothing but crying and cliches... By the end I found her scenes pretty tedious (this was also when I realised I didn't like Ed, so it all pretty much compounded on itself).

Having cut my teeth on Buffy, you bet I noticed this one—with amazement and gratitude!

*nods* I think it's broader than Buffy though - I just think of all the cartoons I grew up with, where the kids are almost universally set against their teachers and their parents. And things like Skins over here, where it being a teen show means that the parents tend to be caricatured comic relief bumbling in the background. I think of anime (or anime + Japanese computer games) on the other hand as tending much more towards a mix of adults and children - and I'm not sure how much I'm basing that on fact rather than pulling a conclusion out of the air, but I have a feeling it might have been one of the things that stopped AtLA feeling like anime to me...

[next_to_normal]

Hahahaha, my first thought was that you MUST be the one who did Ecce Medicus Donnaque! because who else would write a fic about Latin grammar? LOL but I don't even know if you write in Who fandom.

[quinara]

I don't write in Who fandom (apart from that one time, and that crossover I never finished), but your vote is counted nonetheless. :D