Essay: Admiring Martian Canals
This is some essaying I wrote circa 2008, posted at the request of sailorvfan10 . It is a bunch of meta noodling revolving around Super Smash Bros, Fire Emblem, and some potshots at the Gundam Wing fanbase. Not my best work, so feel free to ignore me.
Excerpts from draft #1:
"There is an anime series, also graced by Hikaru Midorikawa's contributions, but the series was cancelled after two episodes and apparently isn't much cop. It does NOT help that in the lone screenshot I've seen, Marth looks like the love child of SailorMercury and the spineless-loser Ryouga from the Ranma anime. In that particular screenshot, Marth is wearing his trademark tiara and also appears to possess some, er, tits."
"I have seen posters on various fora complaining that Marth wasn't dubbed. Fortunately they are shouted down by more sensible fellows who appreciate that a) Midorikawa's voice is perfect for Marth, b) Marth is consequently already perfect, and c) nobody wants to hear another bad dub voice shouting inanities. "Minna, miteite kure!" performed by Midorikawa conveys a sense of the character behind the taunt. The equivalent "Everybody look at me!" or "Hey, check this out!" yelped in American or Canadian English-- no sir, not going to cut it. That's a Sonic the Hedgehog kind of line; there's no elegance in it.
If that doesn't convince you, compare his post-match taunt of "Doesn't it seem I am the victor?"/"Konkai wa boku no kachi da ne?" to the colloquial English equivalent of "Totally owned you, didn't I?" Or, put more simply still, PWNED!!! Listen to the one line as spoken by Midorikawa, and imagine the other one yelped out, Sonic-style."
Draft #2:
So, the original Fire Emblem is being redone for the DS. Yeah, I’m buying it.
It’ll be interesting to see what the canon characterization of the Prince of Altea is like. At present, Marth is an ideal template for fangirl dreaming, even more so than, say, Link. Link as a character is damn near close to being a blank slate (only the Endless Ocean guy is more blank). He’s primarily the player’s POV character, to the point where you spend a lot of Ocarina of Time staring at the back of his head, and he’s mute. Link is you, the player, and you can have him be a noble and industrious young man, or you can have him raiding homes for rupees and torturing cuccos for kicks. Still, the lengthy intro exposition to Twilight Princess does a fair deal more to establish Link as a character by subjecting him to extensive and wordy interactions with the rest of Ordon Village. So the player of TP does have something of a “canon” Link to work with, even if nobody has any idea what he would really sound like in dialogue.
[Asking tinned questions for purposes of exposition is not dialogue]
The “canon” Marth Lowell in Smash Bros. has an awful lot in common with Percival Lowell’s canals on Mars. If you get a close-up view, they turn out not to exist. This is partly because Smash Bros. is, by nature, a meta exercise that smashes all canon to hell and back, but also because fans without access to the original, untranslated, Fire Emblem games have nothing to go on besides the meta bastardization! Fans of Mario, Link, Solid Snake, Samus Aran, and Sonic the Hedgehog have decades of games across multiple systems to cherry-pick their canon from. If you’re into Marth, or his Melee clone Roy, you have... Melee. And some stuff gacked off Wikipedia. And from Melee, you have a picture of a very young man-- a boy, really-- with an elegant fighting style, an adorable voice, and and some dramatic poses to go with his dramatic choice in costume. Oh, yes, and pretty hair and a pretty tiara.
And for a fighting game, that’s absolutely all you need-- a perfect little assembly of character design, moves, and sound effects. But if you’re going to take fantasizing about the Prince of Altea to a more active level and start (dear lord no) writing new adventures for him, where exactly to you turn for the characterization?
Well, you can do what a lot of people seem to do and just rewrite old Gundam Wing fics. One Hikaru Midorikawa character can be interchanged for another, right? So the Imperfect Soldier (Heero Yuy) and his long-haired comic sidekick (Duo Maxwell) are repurposed as Prince Marth and his red-haired sidekick Roy of Pherae, who doesn’t even belong in the same continuity as far as Fire Emblem is concerned. But we’re not concerned with Fire Emblem here, are we? And comedy, or sentimental mush, ensues.
I’d bet Gundam Wing was the entry point into fandom and fanfiction for many a fangirl, so it’s not at all surprising to see the same tired Gundam Wing ‘fic-tropes being recycled into various other media bases. And the fanon clichés are usually as inaccurate and inappropriate in the new fandoms as they were in GW to begin with. The flowery descriptions of silken hair and sapphire eyes are bad enough (what teenaged boys even think in those terms?), but at least in GW, the depiction of dour, intense Heero and happy-go-skippy Duo had some vague basis in canon. Well, actually the original Duo Maxwell isn’t happy-go-skippy at all, but by the time you get to the Ground Zero manga, he’s blatant comic relief and drawn like a girl to boot. Does that make it fanfic-for-hire? Could be.
Ahem. So, meet another iteration of 1X2: MarthRoy, whose cardinal traits include a cool, distant Marth and a hotheaded (if not outright pyromaniacal) Roy. Because, as one weary fellow fan noted, hair color completely dictates personality. Apparently the hothead/pyro thing does Roy a terrible disservice. As for Marth... well, what does lie beneath blue hair and a spiffy costume? Is he intense and antisocial, alienated from fellow man by betrayal and exile? Is he a chilly introvert, off on a different plane from other humans? Or is he a very nice, sweet, well-bred young man, courteous in spite of his circumstances, a dear friend and ideal boyfriend?
Well, judging from his victory taunts, he’s a bit of a showoff. Reputation for nobility and justice notwithstanding.
[Smash Brothers is not really the place to turn up if your main concern is justice. You clobber small animals and children for acclaim and coins.]
Cut some tl;dr analysis of "dialogue" in SSB
So, Prince Marth of Altea is a cute kid with a flair for drama and an elegant manner of speech, and something of an arrogant streak. Not a machine, not a monster, and not really perfect boyfriend material in his Melee incarnation. Now, the narrative Subspace Emissary component of Brawl might reveal depths to Marth’s character, but so far he’s shown up, looked cute in a melancholy way, and fought against really crummy enemies. Well, melancholy is some depth of characterization, I guess.
Cut for tl;dr involving Ike
Fun Fact #8: The sound files for each character in Brawl consist mostly of grunts, moans, and screams. If you’ve ever wondered what Samus Aran would sound like in a porno film, you now have fair idea of it.
There was more, believe me, but I think this was enough.
Excerpts from draft #1:
"There is an anime series, also graced by Hikaru Midorikawa's contributions, but the series was cancelled after two episodes and apparently isn't much cop. It does NOT help that in the lone screenshot I've seen, Marth looks like the love child of SailorMercury and the spineless-loser Ryouga from the Ranma anime. In that particular screenshot, Marth is wearing his trademark tiara and also appears to possess some, er, tits."
"I have seen posters on various fora complaining that Marth wasn't dubbed. Fortunately they are shouted down by more sensible fellows who appreciate that a) Midorikawa's voice is perfect for Marth, b) Marth is consequently already perfect, and c) nobody wants to hear another bad dub voice shouting inanities. "Minna, miteite kure!" performed by Midorikawa conveys a sense of the character behind the taunt. The equivalent "Everybody look at me!" or "Hey, check this out!" yelped in American or Canadian English-- no sir, not going to cut it. That's a Sonic the Hedgehog kind of line; there's no elegance in it.
If that doesn't convince you, compare his post-match taunt of "Doesn't it seem I am the victor?"/"Konkai wa boku no kachi da ne?" to the colloquial English equivalent of "Totally owned you, didn't I?" Or, put more simply still, PWNED!!! Listen to the one line as spoken by Midorikawa, and imagine the other one yelped out, Sonic-style."
Draft #2:
So, the original Fire Emblem is being redone for the DS. Yeah, I’m buying it.
It’ll be interesting to see what the canon characterization of the Prince of Altea is like. At present, Marth is an ideal template for fangirl dreaming, even more so than, say, Link. Link as a character is damn near close to being a blank slate (only the Endless Ocean guy is more blank). He’s primarily the player’s POV character, to the point where you spend a lot of Ocarina of Time staring at the back of his head, and he’s mute. Link is you, the player, and you can have him be a noble and industrious young man, or you can have him raiding homes for rupees and torturing cuccos for kicks. Still, the lengthy intro exposition to Twilight Princess does a fair deal more to establish Link as a character by subjecting him to extensive and wordy interactions with the rest of Ordon Village. So the player of TP does have something of a “canon” Link to work with, even if nobody has any idea what he would really sound like in dialogue.
[Asking tinned questions for purposes of exposition is not dialogue]
The “canon” Marth Lowell in Smash Bros. has an awful lot in common with Percival Lowell’s canals on Mars. If you get a close-up view, they turn out not to exist. This is partly because Smash Bros. is, by nature, a meta exercise that smashes all canon to hell and back, but also because fans without access to the original, untranslated, Fire Emblem games have nothing to go on besides the meta bastardization! Fans of Mario, Link, Solid Snake, Samus Aran, and Sonic the Hedgehog have decades of games across multiple systems to cherry-pick their canon from. If you’re into Marth, or his Melee clone Roy, you have... Melee. And some stuff gacked off Wikipedia. And from Melee, you have a picture of a very young man-- a boy, really-- with an elegant fighting style, an adorable voice, and and some dramatic poses to go with his dramatic choice in costume. Oh, yes, and pretty hair and a pretty tiara.
And for a fighting game, that’s absolutely all you need-- a perfect little assembly of character design, moves, and sound effects. But if you’re going to take fantasizing about the Prince of Altea to a more active level and start (dear lord no) writing new adventures for him, where exactly to you turn for the characterization?
Well, you can do what a lot of people seem to do and just rewrite old Gundam Wing fics. One Hikaru Midorikawa character can be interchanged for another, right? So the Imperfect Soldier (Heero Yuy) and his long-haired comic sidekick (Duo Maxwell) are repurposed as Prince Marth and his red-haired sidekick Roy of Pherae, who doesn’t even belong in the same continuity as far as Fire Emblem is concerned. But we’re not concerned with Fire Emblem here, are we? And comedy, or sentimental mush, ensues.
I’d bet Gundam Wing was the entry point into fandom and fanfiction for many a fangirl, so it’s not at all surprising to see the same tired Gundam Wing ‘fic-tropes being recycled into various other media bases. And the fanon clichés are usually as inaccurate and inappropriate in the new fandoms as they were in GW to begin with. The flowery descriptions of silken hair and sapphire eyes are bad enough (what teenaged boys even think in those terms?), but at least in GW, the depiction of dour, intense Heero and happy-go-skippy Duo had some vague basis in canon. Well, actually the original Duo Maxwell isn’t happy-go-skippy at all, but by the time you get to the Ground Zero manga, he’s blatant comic relief and drawn like a girl to boot. Does that make it fanfic-for-hire? Could be.
Ahem. So, meet another iteration of 1X2: MarthRoy, whose cardinal traits include a cool, distant Marth and a hotheaded (if not outright pyromaniacal) Roy. Because, as one weary fellow fan noted, hair color completely dictates personality. Apparently the hothead/pyro thing does Roy a terrible disservice. As for Marth... well, what does lie beneath blue hair and a spiffy costume? Is he intense and antisocial, alienated from fellow man by betrayal and exile? Is he a chilly introvert, off on a different plane from other humans? Or is he a very nice, sweet, well-bred young man, courteous in spite of his circumstances, a dear friend and ideal boyfriend?
Well, judging from his victory taunts, he’s a bit of a showoff. Reputation for nobility and justice notwithstanding.
[Smash Brothers is not really the place to turn up if your main concern is justice. You clobber small animals and children for acclaim and coins.]
Cut some tl;dr analysis of "dialogue" in SSB
So, Prince Marth of Altea is a cute kid with a flair for drama and an elegant manner of speech, and something of an arrogant streak. Not a machine, not a monster, and not really perfect boyfriend material in his Melee incarnation. Now, the narrative Subspace Emissary component of Brawl might reveal depths to Marth’s character, but so far he’s shown up, looked cute in a melancholy way, and fought against really crummy enemies. Well, melancholy is some depth of characterization, I guess.
Cut for tl;dr involving Ike
Fun Fact #8: The sound files for each character in Brawl consist mostly of grunts, moans, and screams. If you’ve ever wondered what Samus Aran would sound like in a porno film, you now have fair idea of it.
There was more, believe me, but I think this was enough.