estirose | Talking About My Fandoms, Yuletide 2013 edition.

estirose

I just wanted to babble on, and not in the DYW letter, which was plenty long as it was. Fandoms are in comments.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

estirose

I got into Final Fantasy II entirely by accident. I think I heard of the Final Fantasy series and saw II in the iTunes store, and went from there. While some people hate the level grind mechanic in this game, it's one of my favorite things. I'm the kind of person who likes games like GURPS, where you're not limited to one class (unless you want to be). I've defeated this game so many times it's not funny, and yet I'm still occasionally finding new things that I didn't know about.

I like it so much, in fact, that I recorded the dialogue for it (I'm not kidding, I have a screen shot of almost every single line of dialogue in the entire game, or at least I did) and put it into a transcript. And then I wrote a location guide. I'd write a walkthrough, but I'm kind of more a "my instinct says to turn left right after the bridge to get to to the bridge overlook with the cafe" kind of person.

The characters I like the most, as I mentioned in my main letter, are Maria and Minwu. Maria is going through so much grief in the beginning, and it only gets worse. (It doesn't help that she keeps losing people in the game). If there's anybody going through grief and depression, it's her. And yet she makes a great black mage-type with better armor and fighting skills. Train her up on one of the main elemental spells and Holy, and she's a powerhouse. Minwu is both wise and has the world's wickedest sense of humor, I think. He believes strongly in fate and isn't afraid to face his own death, is able to laugh even though he knows what must be coming.

There are some really strong secondary characters, too. You grow to love Leila, Paul, Cid, Josef, and everybody else. Hilda, Gordon, and Scott are all Royals Who Do Something (even if that something leads to said royal becoming captive and replaced by a monster, but that's another story).

I have to admit, there are some annoying parts of the game. You backtrack a fair amount (like any other game), getting your spells above 10 is really annoying (I think I've gotten Fire to level 12, once), don't get me started on the problematic speech of the island villagers, and Firion's sprite makes it look like somebody cut his throat. There's very little backstory on anyone unless you read Japanese and can get your hands on the novel (and that's AU anyway). In the GBA and Android versions, if you forget to save, you get to repeat stuff - fortunately, you can save anywhere.

But, I wouldn't have bought it on three different platforms if I didn't love it and didn't find value in playing it. I just love the story and the characters, which were both amazing for 1988. Sometimes, I swear, there's more story about these characters than there is on my more modern games. And that is an amazing achievement.

Edited (Format) Date: 2013-10-19 01:18 am (UTC)

From:

estirose

It seems weird to request a game that I'm in the middle of playing. Yet, that's exactly what I'm doing! It's very hard to spoil me because I watched the whole game (and am trying to forget the sections that I'm playing). It's just that this is one of those fandoms that really needs more fic, and I'm more than happy to facilitate that.

What really attracts me, as I stated in my DYW latter, is the memories. What do you do when you know that you're somehow going to die? That so many people went to bed and didn't wake up, and you are now faced with all the regrets and sorrows you had in your life? Or if you lived, that you're now alone in a dying world, trying to find other survivors? Is humankind going to be lost, or is the ending really a hopeful beginning despite Seto's narration?

It's really interesting to consider what people are like after the disaster. As much as I'm not fond of Crow (I know what happens to him, but his personality rubs me the wrong way), I am interested in the fact that he's like Seto, taking his cues from what he can. The other characters lived before this and can remember the world as it was, but Seto, Crow, and Ren don't. I'm not sure that Seto knows what half the things he encounters are for, though he's good with hitting things with them. (I can see him going "what in the heck is this thing that I'm walking on?" when he reaches the roller coaster.)

I sympathize with Shin a ton. There's a cynical side of me that says that despite wanting humanity to go on, maybe it's a mercy to let the world end this time. After all, the population might be small enough that humans might never recover, and when the survivors die out, who's going to know to go to other lands? And yet, I think of how much Seto has cheered everybody up by existing and being there for them.

I just want to cry sometimes with all this. I mean, I played Gamma World (post-apocalyptic pen-and-paper RPG) as a teenager, and it never hit me as hard as this game has. That was neat adventures - this game hits you in the emotions with the emptiness and the settings and the memories. You can see the abandoned buildings, the things left behind, hear the stories of these people who aren't around any more. I have to go through it slowly because I want to savor every piece of the scenery and every Memory.

It's just... I want All The Fic. For a game I haven't even finished yet! I think that says something about this game and its setting, and I hope that you love it too.

Edited Date: 2013-10-19 01:37 am (UTC)

From:

estirose

I wanted to talk a little about Ghost Soup Infiel Blue and why I got hooked on it.

Okay, I'm not an anime fan, my tastes run towards Tokusatsu, but this reminded me of Robotech, in a really good way. I saw Robotech when I was growing up, and I discovered this more adult take on the genre much later on. It got me through a rough spot in life, and I'm really grateful for it.

I have to admit, I don't participate much in the shipping wars. This is typical of me, believe it or not. As I said in my letter, I watch it for Bipi and his staff, and I wrote a fic shipping Jin with his offscreen boyfriend, Ryuuji. (I am so totally amused, because Jin and Ryuuji are the names of two characters in Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters, which comes up in some of my social circles, and this gets so confusing sometimes!)

Bipi I see as quietly sadistic, a wolf in sheep's clothing. He knows how to pass off as normal, but his staff knows better. They're all loyal to him, and they're willing to die for him. (Rufus did, at least.) He quietly encourages their dark sides, and they encourage his, in a way. And he's very much a voyeur - if Jin wants to haul his boyfriend into an empty room for some sexytiems, Bipi doesn't care at all. It's a strange kind of family that just get along because they're oddballs. Bipi doesn't take too well to staff that are otherwise, and such staff are either transferred out or quietly killed.

His greatest friendship is with Nuri Kabe. Like most of her race, she has two mouths - one for speaking, one for eating, and her hair is prehensile. She's always eating, and she has a taste for meat which he loves to satisfy. He's curious about her and her species, and she's more than willing to put up with him in return for saying nothing about her eating habits. (Since Jin got introduced and quickly forgotten, I'm not sure how he and Nuri get along, other than they seem friendly enough. But I'd like to think that she's a romantic at heart and would do her best to help him with his love life.)

Bipi and his staff are not as important to the storyline as the other characters are, but I really appreciate them. I appreciate that the series is willing to be open about Jin's sexual orientation, though I wish they'd shown Ryuuji. So, that's my reason for asking for the series this year.

From:

estirose

Kamen Rider Kiva:

I'll be the first to admit that Kiva has plotholes. Tons of plotholes. Enough plotholes to drown Tokyo. That being said, it is one of my favorite Kamen Rider series. A lot of it has to do with my fascination with the fact that the Fangire surely have some kind of society, but we never see it. We don't know if they're born Fangire or something happens to them.

The trio of Taiga, Wataru, and Mio interest me as well. Taiga has issues about his family that leave him clingy, especially when it comes to Wataru being like him. He doesn't want to lose the only family he has. I think he clings so stubbornly to Fangire ways because he was raised by Shima, who rather screwed things up magificently. Wataru grew up isolated, was raised by a Fangire and a Kivat, and somehow ended up less screwed up than Taiga. I'm not sure how, because we know very little about how things were for him. We don't know if there were any Fangire things that he assumed were human things because of his lack of knowledge. Heck, we don't know what physical effect being half Fangire had on him in his lifetime. And Mio? We know little about her except that she can't say no and can get stubborn in all the wrong places.She was woefully developed as a character and looking back, that really sucks.

I like my shiny pretty incest pairing, but on reflection, what I wan more and more is Mio having a backbone and doing something useful, damn it, instead of colliding with trees. I mean, there's a great setup, a group of people living among us for centuries, and we only know them as monsters of the week for the most part. I mean, do you cut yourself off if you fall in love with a human? How did Mio manage to date Wataru with that in mind?

This series just brings up more questions than it answers, and I know there will never be any answers, but I keep hoping anyway that I'll find them. Somehow.

From:

estirose

There's so much I can talk about on Fatal Frame. How people keep ending up dead, of tragic circumstances, of hellgate rituals and those who get sacrificed to appease them. And of course, there's the living.

My first ever encounter was with Fatal Frame III when I attended a sleepover related to an RP I belonged to at the time. And then someone apped Mio, I remembered her, started watching LPs and got hooked. This was the game series that made me realize that I loved horror. At least the suspenseful kind - gore doesn't do much for me.

As I said in my letter, I love the tragedies that unfold in these games, the hint of backstory you just want to fill. And the living people... I realized we probably know more about some of the hostile ghosts than we do about the protagonists. I just have this desire to read more and more about these people and their fates.

I played the first game first, and so I have a really soft spot for Miku and Mafuyu. Mafuyu is kind, determined, and loyal (I would have said responsible, but the idiot stuck around in a rockslide, so....); his sister Miku orderly, responsible, and determined. (I swear, Miku's favorite line is "Mafuyu!", which kind of drives me nuts.) Miku keeps Rei in the land of the living in the third game and just keeps on going period in the first. I'm just as fascinated by great-grandmother Yae, and the ties that bind Miku and Mafuyu to the Fatal Frame II storyline, tenuous as they are. And Yae? Yae tried to get out of a bad situation and made things worse, and she doesn't even remember for the most part. (There's a line in Yae's battle dialogue that makes me wonder how much her ghost "remembers" about Minakami.)

For the second game, I have to admit I don't care as much about the characters, though I love Mio's mother bear tendencies, and Broken Neck woman is the one that breaks my heart. I feel extremely sorry for Sae, but weirdly I feel glad for Sejiro Makabe - he finally got what he wanted, even if he died doing it and got turned into a spirit. I want to smack Itsuki a lot (good plan, bad idea), and hug Chitose and the kids playing tag.

On the third game, I of course love Miku, and Yuu is also a favorite of mine, despite most of what we know about him is limited to a few scenes and Rei's notes. Yuu seems he would be a good counselor. Rei I have mixed feelings about, but I realize that she's in a really nasty depression (not helped by getting stuck in the Manor of Sleep.) The Kuzuharas (Wandering Mother and Wandering Daughter) break my heart the most. Not that I don't feel sorry for the rest of the cast, but I really liked that poor family. Kyouka I want to thud over the head and make her see sense, though I realize this is part of her tragedy. Had Akito not done what he did, there would probably be no Manor in this form.

Actually, it's fascinating how many problems were caused by guys and love in this series, as if a normally good thing turned bad. Kirie's ritual failed because she loved her lover, Itsuki's failed because he loved Mutsuki too much, Sae's failed because Yae loved her sister too much (and Itsuki was guilt-ridden and the impetus behind her plan), Reika's whole storyline wouldn't have happened if Kaname had been drowned like he was supposed to be, and the Haibaras certainly committed a ton of ethics violations trying to cure Sakuya, not to mention caused the indirect deaths of everybody on the island.

Yeah, this is a messed up universe, that's for sure. But it wouldn't be half as interesting if it wasn't! And I hope that you have or will enjoy it too.