RMX around the Web
I’m not the only one who just started ComaMi recently! Kawashima Rumi's blog now includes a gameplay diary. She remarks how cute it is for Zero to keep checking up on X every step of the way while they’re separated in the opening chapter. Looks like X isn’t the only one built to worry! (Or did those two switch personalities for ComaMi?! Rumi-san ( Read more... )
The real issue is simply that MMX is a dead fandom in the States. (Sorry to say, but it's the truth). There hasn't been any new movement since Command Mission- most of the original games are only available now on emulation or by seeking out, deliberately, the obscure and now out of print Gamecube collections. This is more effort and emulation requires more technical skill than your average 15-16 year old slash fangirl wants to put in, especially when they've got the latest FMV-tripe from Squeenix to drool over on the PS3...
Without a new game series, movie, or animation, it's just fallen off the radar here.
What remains are a group of people like me who are old enough to remember having played the original games new (and who therefore don't bind to silly things like 'height rules') and people who (this is my least favorite thing of all) base their fics off other people's fanfiction. Which is why we get ridiculous stories where X is a screaming, simpering, weepy uke all the time, or Zero is a drunken idiot who spends every moment outside of Hunting getting pissed in a bar 'just down the road from Maverick HQ'.
...not that I'm bitter or anything. ;)
To get my XZero fix, I almost have to go to Japanese sites.
I know what you mean. Rule 35 is in serious effect for me- I have to WRITE the X/Z slash I want to see, and that sucks. A lot. XD
X just seems more emotionally sophisticated to me, I think he would usually take the lead in their relationship. With varying degrees of forcefulness, because I think Zero barely recognizes someone putting moves on when he sees them. So, to me it’s hard to picture Zero putting the moves on anyone much. (He could learn, though.^^)
Hmmmm... not sure I agree with this either, because Zero pings my seme-dar really hard. He's forceful, self-assured, cocky, as well as being highly intuitive, which would give him a better than average ability to read people- and thus steer them in directions he wants them to go. Since both X and Zero are command-level Hunters, it's hard for me to think that either of them are lacking in the social skills department. Zero can be snippy, but he wouldn't have gotten to be temporary head of the Maverick Hunters if he didn't understand people, how to motivate them, inspire and aggravate them. ;) All of which to say, I think it's wrong to think of them in limited ways, since Zero is hardly -shy- in battle...
I've written X in a variety of ways as the mood strikes me, but overall I see him as being ... more subtle than Zero, definitely, and with wider shades of emotional range. I don't think that makes him more sophisticated though, as I look at things like Day of Sigma's final battle sequence, where he's frozen up and just can't even think of what to do while Sigma is attacking Zero. I also think of his question to Zero about 'why someone would become a Maverick' and the sort of 'simpler' thought process that he seems to demonstrate there. Meaning, I guess, I think X isn't quite as smart as Zero. ;) But he does have much more 'heart' and compassion and patience- these things are ultimately what make him stronger than Zero.
I haven’t seen much smut with Axl yet, to get an idea of how the Japanese fans are treating him. The closest thing to a trend I can see is making him sneakier than he looks -- having the other two let him get away with things because they think he’s an innocent child, not realizing he plans to seduce one of them.
That actually sounds about right to me. I like a crafty!Axl anyway better than a 'duh, I'm new, explain everything in the world to me' Axl or (as US fandom seems to get off on) 'boo hoo, Red raped me and now I'm a victim!' Axl.
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So in the social department, I think X has an insurmountable lead over Zero. Dr. Wily was not thinking about fitting into society; didn’t Stone Kong call Zero the purest war machine he’d ever seen? Sure, Zero can learn. (Side note: I was SO PLEASED when I first saw Zero’s upgrade system in X4 was called LEARNING, instead of taking weapon chips! X’s limitless potential is the basic theme of the series, but I’d hate to see him outgrow his friend.) But at the same time, X is also learning even more.
My view of X is an all-purpose model and Zero as a specialist. Zero is very good at fighting and has found an important job where he can put his skill to good use. I can understand his becoming a leader in the Hunters and outranking X there. But in almost any other part of life, I think X would have the edge.
hardly -shy-
I don't want to see either of them as a blushing maiden!^^;
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Hmmmmm. I want to think this is so, but at the same time, I can't help but look at other bits of his behavior in Day of Sigma... for example, how -absolutely surprised- he is when Sigma attacks Zero, even though Zero has been hrming and hawing and sort of mumbling about 'bad feelings about this' for quite some time now...
I don't think X is -naive- so much as -book learned-. This has come up actually in conversations with b_b before; that Reploids can be programmed to know all sorts of things intimately, but it has no real MEANING until they actually DO them. So as much as Light might have filled X's head with all the minutae of human behavior and psychology, it doesn't mean jack until he USES those skills and connects them to events inside his neural network in a meaningful way. Reploids are very much learning machines, and I think the analogy of human children (bright, POWERFUL children) is still largely correct. That -innocence-, as Sigma rightfully remarks, makes X special- it's his great strength and weakness.
As far as X's question to Zero... well, I have to go with the dub, since I can't get my hand on the Japanese version for comparative context.. but in the US dub, X sounds almost ANGRY when he's asking this question of Zero. A shade of disgust, even... I don't know how the line was read in Japanese, but X definitely wasn't testing Zero here in our version- he was expressing distaste and lack of understanding.
Dr. Wily was not thinking about fitting into society; didn’t Stone Kong call Zero the purest war machine he’d ever seen? Sure, Zero can learn.
A good point,but one that should also take into account that most Mavericks, Reploids, Hunters and humans have a vastly distorted view of what Zero and X are.
It is definitely true though that any 'social' subroutines that ended up in Zero.. well, hell, he should be less social than FORTE, and yet, somehow, he manages to be many things he shouldn't be... This definitely makes him Wily's great masterpiece, but maybe not for the reasons Wily wanted, hee hee.
Man, I am full of the tl;dr lately. x.x
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First, I question how much most Repliroids can learn. Isn’t X’s limitless potential one of the things that make him unique? (The other one being his worrying/angst, about which more may come later -- I do have RMZOCW.^^;) I think most Repliroids are not supposed to develop.
As a recurring theme in the early games, X starts out weaker than Zero, but X improves. In contrast, Zero doesn’t, so X ends up stronger. That’s why, as I mentioned above, I was so pleased with X4. I had thought Zero was hard-wired and not expandable at all. But even though it turned out he can learn after all, he’s still the other masterpiece. I don’t think looking at X and Zero necessarily gives a good idea of what most Repliroids are like.
Second, I question how much X needed to learn. I don’t think he started as a mental child. In Dr. Cain’s journal, his very first impressions of X are as a robot that can think and has free will, so X must have demonstrated those to him somehow. So I think at least some of X’s social programming must have functioned straight out of the box.
Third, even if X did need experience to make sense of his programming at first, by the time of X1/MHX he should have it. He lived through the whole thing: Cain developing Repliroids, their spread throughout society, the occurrence of Mavericks in enough numbers an entire organization had to be created to deal with the problem. None of which helps him his first time in combat, of course, but it does mean he should already have been thinking about Mavericks and what to do about them.
So no matter what questions X is asking, I can’t believe he’s childlike or innocent by X1/MHX. He’s not really young, just short, and he’s not really innocent, he just hasn’t been on the job very long. Unless something blocked a portion of his memory, as seems to have happened to Zero. Perhaps being the prototype for Repliroids that went Maverick gave his worry circuit too much grief. (I know he’s also the prototype for all the ones who don’t go Maverick, but emotional reactions tend not to yield to logic.)
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