Apologies in advance for this sort of whiny post

[professor_tammi]

... actually I'm not too sure if it even is whiny, but. orz

1) Srs shipping question! I don't think I'll get any answers to this, but um - am I the only person who finds the idea of really shipping two characters while only really caring about half of the ship a little odd? Actually, "odd" probably isn't the right word at all for this, but. Personally, I can't really imagine, say, OTPing something if I only really like one of the characters in the pairing. I can understand liking them to various degrees (in fact, this is very common), or merely liking the way they interact with each other, of course. But if I'm going to pair up two characters, I feel I should be at least somewhat invested in them both; there's not that much of a point to shipping if I can't really get into their heads, imo.

(Then again, I am notoriously bad at truly understanding most characters, I think. It's easy when there's something personal for me to relate to, but otherwise... I just tend to have a lot of trouble with it. I guess this is why I'm not a writer!)

2) Having watched some more Avatar, I can say that I like the series, but... how come all of my favorite characters are from the Fire Nation? Lol I don't usually even like villains. I guess Zuko and Iroh kind of don't count as villains anymore, but yeah. Speaking of which, I love their father-son relationship! It's adorable. (Also. I can relate to Iroh's obsession with tea. The only thing better than green tea is tap water.)

Azula is rather fascinating - she's crazy, but it's a calm and collected kind of crazy you don't really see in too many young villains. Ty Lee is surprisingly cute, and I find Mai's constant ":|"-way of approaching everything hilarious because I just think stoics are really funny. I can't help it, ok

Other than that... I guess my only real beef with the show is that it has too many filler episodes. I mean. Yeah, I guess it's not too bad in comparison to certain other shows, but there have been several already and they just feel so unnecessary. Um, maybe I just don't care much for them since they focus entirely on the main Gaang?

Also. I think episode 12 of season two was supposed to make me ship Sokka/Suki but instead I find myself getting curious about Suki/Toph
whoops, I'm not quite sure how my shipping goggles work (do they even work? or are they broken)

3) I made another foray into the Japanese side of FE fandom recently for fun, and among other things, I found

• An Ike who was basically characterized as ToS!Lloyd. What, how does that even (but now I have a very sudden urge to draw FE characters in the costumes of Tales of characters. Why.)
• A Micaiah who fangirled Ike/Soren. Actually, I approve of this idea. She could fangirl them just to annoy Sothe. It totally makes sense!
• Amazingly enough, I managed to find a site which seemed rather against the idea of BlushyUke!Soren and instead drew him as... well. Just Soren. That was nice to see!

Still, I'm curious as to why the japanese fandom draws so many long comic epics and doujinshi and such while western fandom just... doesn't. It requires a lot of time and patience, obviously, but it strikes me as an interesting difference.

Uhm anyway now I have more silly art ideas and I'm in an art block. Not blocked in the sense that I don't know what to draw, but blocked in the sense that I have more than a hundred ideas but can't get them down on canvas properly ugh. (Still. I have to finish my current picture even though I'm really worried it won't turn out well. ;_;)

4) Firefox 5 is kind of cool! Or, well, I'm not sure if it's because of FF5 or not, but my Firefox is currently not lagging and crashing like crazy which hasn't happened in more than a month since I upgraded to Firefox 4. Also, it uses up less memory than FF4. That is pretty awesome. Um hopefully I didn't jinx it by calling it awesome. Every time I think I've solved my ~Firefox problems~ they seem to appear again, so. Yeah.

... right, now I just need to figure out why my computer constantly freezes :D

Comments

[hooves.livejournal.com]

1- I only ever OTP stuff if I *love* both characters in the ship. It doesn't make sense to not like one half of an OTP imo.

2- Iroh is THE BEST THING. Seriously. I loved him. And Zuko. :D

3- I think in Japan in general comics (in various forms) are really commonplace. In other western cultures, you don't really see or meet many fans of "comics". As in, there are still a lot of people who think the only comics are about Batman, and only the nerdiest of nerds reads/owns them.

Whereas it seems in Japan comics are just all over the place, so starting from a young age, artists probably practice drawing like them. Just a thought!

[professor-tammi.livejournal.com]

1) I'm the same, actually. :D But in some cases there seems to be an obvious preference for one half of the ship, so. Idk.

3) That's a valid point! I guess the fact that they'd be exposed to comics at a young age might matter the most, since I've seen plenty of fan artists in the western part of fandom who say they want to draw comics/love manga/etc but still only draw fan art.

Maybe it has something to do with finished work being valued a lot more on the larger art sites, too...? Usually the comics I see are just silly, sketchy things drawn for fun. Pixiv and DeviantART don't have too much of that, in comparison to smaller fansites.

[crimsonmorgan.livejournal.com]

It actually happens quite often to me that I mostly like one part of an OTP. Let's take both my alltime favourites Geoffrey/Elincia and Seth/Eirika. In both cases I fell in love with Seth and Geoffrey first. Then I found their respective supports with Eirika and Elincia the cutest/most interesting/most intriguing/and so forth and started to ship. At first I didn't particularly cared about Eirika or Elincia (and at least in the beginning of Seth/Eirika I looked at the relationship only from one side, namely his, more or less). But via writing the pairings I grew more and more fond of the two ladies (They still don't manage to get in the top ten favourite characters, because the bro kings take up all the space). Though I believe "looking at the pairing from only one side" is the key phrase here. I tend to look at it (mostly) only from one character perspective.

Please excuse my ranting!

[professor-tammi.livejournal.com]

Ah, this is an interesting take on it! I can see why making you write the pairings would make you like Eirika/Elincia more, since as a writer, you're kind of forced to understand both characters to a certain degree. Actually, even drawing fan art makes you more attached to them - or at least it does so in my case.

Maybe I'm just bothered because, well... let's say I ship A/B, love both characters equally, and want to read some fic for it. But if there are way more writers interested in writing A's side of the relationship, while B is more of an afterthought, used for the purpose of shipping than her/his own character, then that might make me feel a little disappointed. I can see why some authors would prefer one character over the other, or if they're new to writing the ship and don't really feel confident in writing both parts of it just yet, but um. That kind of thing is probably why I started wondering about this in the first place. It probably depends on the pairing. orz /rant

If I OTP something, I feel I need to be able to look at the ship from both sides. Maybe it's because I really love seeing how both characters approach the relationship? Looking at a pair mainly from one single perspective isn't something I normally do, though. Hmm. But I guess all of this might just be personal preference? :D

Re: Please excuse my ranting!

[crimsonmorgan.livejournal.com]

Yeah, writing characters can make you like them more (Hey there, Lyon and Valter) but they can also make you hate them (why, Ephraim, why?)

I think it is mostly preference. Of course, if you notice that the love interest is just sort of tacked on without any feeling than it's just plain bad writing. However, in general I would definitely say it's preference; if I like the perspective from character B more than A (for whatever reasons) then I will write it from his/her perspective. It is understandable that some readers might be disappointed by that, but, well, that's not the writer´s fault. It's not like they're paid for catering to the reader´s wishes. They are just having fun and if only writing from B´s perspective is fun to them, well, there's nothing you can do. (Actually, looking back, many of my first fics of Seth/Eirika were just one-sided romances because I was not that interested in her point of view.)

Definitely :D In my case it also definitely depends on how invested I am in the characters.

Re: Please excuse my ranting!

[professor-tammi.livejournal.com]

B-but Ephraim is such a cool guy ;o;

Ah, I don't think authors should write any differently based on others' preferences and I'm glad there's fic at all, of course! But I was mostly just wondering why. Still, your answer makes a lot of sense to me - you became interested in one half first, and then got to know the other half of the pair better by writing them. That's a fine way to go about it, I think, even if you do like Seth/Geoffrey more as characters. :D

Re: Please excuse my ranting!

[crimsonmorgan.livejournal.com]

But he's so horrible to write >:'/

Oh, I didn't want to imply you did. I was mostly rambling as well XD I think bonding with a character while trying to write is really awesome, sometimes even better than instantly falling in love with them.

Seth/Geoffrey, yesssss <3 Ffffffffffff, crack shipping.

[kiu22.livejournal.com]

1- I only ship pairing if I love, or at least like, both of the characters.... sometimes I grow more appreciative of a characters thanks to a ship, but he/she has to interest me from the beginning :/

3- lol, I've find fangirl!Micaiah in more than one fic and I approve of this idea too XD
I don't know the reason why, but I surely wish there were more comics/doujinshis around (FE seems to have not many doujinshis at all actually, not even in Japan)

Artblocks sucks D: hope you'll feel like drawing again soon!

(By the way, I apologize for adding you on Skype and then disappearing, I'm sorry, work and RL completely ate my week ;__;)

[professor-tammi.livejournal.com]

3) W-wait you've seen fangirl!Micaiah in fics? :D I've seen her fangirling twice in Japanese fan comics, but... not in fan fics. Or at least I think I haven't.
And it's true that even the Japanese FE fanbase is pretty small compared to that of other JRPGs... It's odd. It feels like it should be more popular, really.

I managed to overcome my artblock yesterday, so~

(There's no need to apologize - I can understand not having enough time to log in. :) Ah, I haven't really been on myself because I'm kind of scared to get on but uhm, if you'd like to discuss anything then I'd be glad to!)