here, have meta on smash brothers fandom

[omaewokorosu]

I won't lie, if I had never gotten Melee for Christmas in 2002, I wouldn't be here with the likes of the Fire Emblem people. Okay, maybe not, because I got into Fire Emblem through FE7, but I played the game because I thought Eliwood = Roy (and can you blame me?). So maybe I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for Melee. In any case, that isn't the point.

Up until recently I was heavily involved in Smash Brothers fandom. Which we all know, probably. And my favourite characters were undoubtedly my three swordsmen. Which would be Marth, Roy, and Link, in case you didn't know. And let me tell you, when I unlocked Marth, I was excited because oooh shiny new character and he uses a sword! And his name may or may not be Mark, and he might also very well be a girl. Which caused some confusion as to whether or not he was voiced by a guy or not. (Protip: He is. Thank you, Gundam Wing.) But then oooh I unlocked Roy, though I liked Marth better. I was maining Link at the time, and I was fail with Marth and I cursed at him a lot and called him things like 'Princess Martha' and 'Tiara Boy' and generally hated him even though he was hot. (I never said he was hot until I was sure he was a guy, because I grew up in a heavily Catholic household and saying within earshot of my brother, "I THINK THIS GIRL'S HOT," would be suicide.) I bashed him in fics, and then made him run off with Roy, and did all sorts of shenanigans to him that would probably make me cry and scream if I reread any of it.

(So if you are keeping track there at home, Marth = first experience with Midorikawa Hikaru. Gundam Wing came months later.)

So I knew nothing about this hot prince except what was on his trophy. Roy too. I thought they were from the same game, and wondered why Japan was so mean to not let us have this awesome shiny game of sparkly wonder. And man did I ship them. I shipped them like burning.

(And if I ever write that FE/Gundam Wing fusion thing, Marth ends up as Heero and Roy ends up as Duo just for irony.)

And they were out of character. I didn't know, because I couldn't read Japanese. I had an elementary grasp of the language, even. I couldn't understand what Marth was telling me in his victory speeches. So I did what everyone else in the fandom did and still does and made shit up. And looking back at it, I shudder, though the funny part is my Marth wasn't as emo suck as everyone else's. I guess I read decent fic in that section. I don't know. I made Marth someone I could relate to, which was definitely not what the rest of fandom was doing, and blah blah blah.

When I was maining Link, I was heavily into Legend of Zelda fandom. When I began maining Roy, I had just gotten FE9 for Christmas after playing FE7 and enjoying it. (I wasted so many hours on that game, it isn't even funny.) Sadly, no Roy, and I didn't know about translation patches back then, so I was sad. I would never experience Roy's game. Tellius was my intro to the fandom. I got slapped in the face when I found FE6's game script.

This is not the Roy from Smash Brothers.

Part of the problem with going from Smash Brothers to Fire Emblem is that, well, the characters you think you know actually don't exist.

So the Roy I had been writing for most of my fandom life? Didn't exist. Doesn't exist. He never did, he never will. And I was okay with that. I liked this Roy better, in fact, because he wasn't a douchebag. Or obsessed with fire. Or hyperactive. Or some strange clone of Duo Maxwell.

If you don't know about Fire Emblem, though? You wouldn't know this. I can spot a Fire Emblem writer who writes/wrote for Smash Brothers fandom like I can recognise Midorikawa Hikaru's voice. Instantly. Because there are certain 'character quirks' that only Smash Brothers writers would know of or use. So when I read this fic recently about pyromaniac Roy and him being able to turn into a fire dragon? Not only did I know that the author came from Smash Brothers fandom, I knew they also read Callisto-hime's dreck fics. (And then I read the author's note at the end, which confirmed everything, and I felt like God for all of five seconds.)

And having written for Smash Brothers fandom, I can recognise it better, because I used these same quirks myself. I didn't know any better. So then I frolicked my way through the Japanese mess that was FE6 (because I couldn't read Japanese very well back then), found a translation patch, went through it again, and fell in love with it. I went through the game script over and over, memorised supports.

Back when I entered Fire Emblem fandom, there was a stigma on people from Smash Brothers fandom saying that we were all fail. Talk about a sweeping generalisation.

No one knew I was from SSB until they looked at my profile.

Most people don't give a shit though about characterisation and what not. They will write Roy as he is written in Smash Brothers fandom and not give a fuck.

WHICH BRINGS ME TO MARTH. I always liked Marth, even when I cursed at him, called him names, and said I hated him. I got a copy of the ROM for FE1 and trudged through that. I remember saying, quite clearly, "This is Marth? He's... He's bland."

Yeah, sorry, Marth, but having no reactions to anything is not my idea of having a personality.

So what the hell was I supposed to do if I wanted to write for this? Which I did want to, and I did write for it, briefly, before I left the fandom. If I used my Marth, the one I had been writing for six or so years now, I'd be marked as "That One From Smash Brothers Fandom".

I wrote Marth with a personality I created based off of what happened to him in FE1 and FE3, and I took some stuff from the anime too, and here was my Marth, my new Marth. He was still different from FE1/3 Marth, but whatever. I can't write bland characters.

And this Marth was different from my SSB Marth. He had his canon to back him up, for one thing. He wasn't too different, but he was different enough that people liked him and thought he was believeable.

NOW MOST PEOPLE DON'T CARE ABOUT THAT, they are just going to write their Marth and fandom be damned. If I think he's a prissy princess who flaps about on clothes and is icy and basically Aya Fujimiya in a tunic and with blue hair, then dammit, I am going to write him that way. Even if his games say otherwise! Because I don't care, this fic is only about Marth. And maybe Roy and Ike. So it should be in the Fire Emblem section, because it's not like Link and all are in it!

Clearly these people need to learn to a) adapt and b) get used to the fact that their precious SSB Marth is not the same as FE Marth. There is differing interpretation, and then there is OOC.

also no, Marth and Roy do not meet. Ever. Sorry. And even if they did, who's to say they'd even like each other, much less make out with each other? Are we just pulling subtext out of our asses now? Is Marth/Roy the new Heero/Duo?

oh well that explains everything.

So wait how the hell did I ship Marth/Roy so hardcore and yet hate Heero/Duo? How does that work?

Oh probably because I never thought Marth was cold and distant and monotone and whatever else GW fandom thinks Heero is.

(GW dub, I hate you so much for ruining Heero. And Duo. And just...everyone.)

Anyway.

Maybe it's just me, because I can only speak for myself, but there was enough disconnect between SSB Marth and FE Marth that they were, to me, two different people. Which is how I was able to confine SSB Marth to my SSB works and FE Marth to my FE stuff. So it didn't bother me to switch over. Because really, you are talking about two different characters. One has no context whatsoever and the other one has his canon to back him up. If you put SSB Marth into his game, he now has context, and that context clashes horribly with your preconceived notions about Marth.

Granted there was a lot of clashing with my Marth and the one presented in FE1, but FE1 Marth clashed horribly with his own damn context so what the hell did you want me to do?

This isn't just a problem in Elibe or Archanea (which was at the time Akaneia), because Ike gets horribly mangled in SSB fandom as well, and then that comes into FE9 fandom and then people groan and complain and have a war or three or whatever over it.

The best part is when people admit they've never played the games. At least I can say I have.

tl;dr There are Smash Brothers authors who came over to Fire Emblem, learned their beloved characters didn't exist the way they thought they did, adapted, played the games, wrote fic that was in character with the fandom. Some of us went further and looked at game scripts and wrote lengthy meta and created support groups and whatever else.

Then there are the ones who think Fire Emblem fandom is like Smash Brothers fandom, except you can only write about Marth and Roy and Ike.

I'm full of meta today, so expect FE shenanigan next. :D