Fic: Her Summer Blouse

[fanbeatsman]

Title: Her Summer Blouse
Characters/Pairing: Franziska/Ema
Rating/Warnings: explicit sex; some very strong language
Word count: c. 3000
Summary: Ema Skye has ways of making that glimmerous fop's parties bearable.
A/N: Written for this nicely unspecific, if vaguely annoying, kink meme prompt, for no better reason than that at the exact time I saw it

Comments

[sarahofcroydon]

You know, that tangent about Apollo gave me a lot of food for thought. :3 I think you're absolutely right; the takes on Phoenix in fandom go on forever... Edgeworth too, they've both acquired a sort of 'legendary character' status. Part of that, like you say has got to do with the number of games, but I feel sometimes like some of the negative fan reaction has rubbed off on people's will to adopt characters from AJ to explore.

Comparing Phoenix and Apollo is something I could do for hours, and possibly where you could find another reason there's little character work for Apollo. Thinking on it now, often I automatically find myself thinking of Apollo as a more negative/prudish kind of person, and I wonder where I get it from. Looking at his narratives in-game I think you could substitute them for Phoenix's and vice-versa (and Phoenix can be remarkably negative sometimes) and nobody would notice.
For some reason though, this impression remains with me and I think in part it has to do with Apollo's portrayal in fic, particularly when contrasted/paired with Klavier and that's something I'd like to change. (I suppose part of that comes from his vocal dislike of Klavier's music/showman's personality yet throughout the game he comes to admire him, and a lot of it is bravado too (there's a couple of those '...I want to be cool!' monologues).

I reckon a lot of it has to do with design, too, as well as my favourite topic-masculinity. For starters- Phoenix wears a dark suit, Apollo a boyish vest with his sleeves rolled up. Phoenix can nagivate a variety of roles easily- the boyish rookie in a cheap suit to a consummate professional looking dashing with his finger thrust out. Apollo's clothes and also stature don't allow him to navigate those roles as easily- no matter how defiantly he points that finger, visually he's still young, boyish and all of those traits aren't understood as professional or adult. In that regard he's not read as terribly masculine, which is part of it, if you ask me... Phoenix has 'got' it and it's far easier to work back from there... Apollo hasn't 'got' it and it's harder to built it up for him. No matter how much stubble I put on him, he's still short. :D
Phoenix Wright fans have been blessed with original characters that are bright and vibrant, wacky and also very 'normal' (insofar as Oldbag is 'normal'...)
...the AJ design is a little more 'yaoi', if you get me. Kristoph and Klavier could have stepped right out of any series targeted at young women (and indeed, AJ was advertised in various yaoi related magazines). In terms of yaoi/slash fandoms, you can do just about anything with Phoenix and Edgeworth- they're so malleable you can fit them to any 'role' you prefer, and what's more, can do it in character too (that's a whole 'nother conversation). Looking at Japanese yaoi sites, the ratio of sites for P/E to E/P (talking explicit sexual roles) is just about equal. In Japanese fandom, from my experience, that's pretty rare considering yaoi as a genre requires the explicit delineating of sexual roles.
Apollo and Klavier (as arguably the two main characters) can't navigate these roles as easily- Japanese sites have them at about 80% K/A and 20% A/K. If anything, fandom is predictable sometimes and despite those of us who want to move past stereotypes, those stereotypes will still exist in the media fandom produces. They've rubbed off on me, to a certain extent (Apollo as a grumpy, prudish uke for example) and probably because they're harder to challenge, there's less media because other pairings might fill someone's kink or desires in an easier way.

I'll save Klavier for another day because he goes on forever... my sister essentially gave up on him because he looked so yaoi, blase and stereotyped. Maybe I give him far more credit because I've made him up a complex personality, but then again, that's all we've ever been doing anyway. ;3

Man, I hope that made any sense at all!