ZEN MEME
This zen meme turned into a rant about why I hate SEED Destiny within the first five minutes, but then it got back on track.
Shinn: I apped Shinn because I wanted a canon I was familiar with making fun of. That canon was Gundam SEED Destiny, which I did doofy parodies of once a week. That character was Shinn by virtue of the fact that I hadn’t seen all of SEED and thus couldn’t app Athrun, who I think is really hot.
I loooooooooove Shinn. He’s sort of like a human pinball. If he gets launched in one direction he will HURTLE THERE AT TOP SPEEDS with no concern for smacking into the little metal bars they stick into pinball machines. And then something emo happens to him and he drifts back through the pinball machine all sadly until BAM you shoot him off again and he hits things some more and comes out looking a little sillier for metaphorically running into the wall that is metaphorical Athrun but starting the process all over again. He has so much energy and he’s so passionate about stuff. He’s also tsuntsuntsunRAGEtsundere. He’s soooo cuuute.
Now, let me say something about SEED Destiny. It actually applies to all of my canons but 00 and Frontier, which are unfinished. I like the idea of Destiny more than I like what happened. I actually adore everything that happens in Destiny up until ZAFT’s attack on Orb, at which point Team Archangel starts beating the crap out of the new cast. Rather than letting the new characters solve problems, the old cast fixes everything. It’s really an unsatisfying ending, because, in the end, the new cast never overcomes any great challenge. The end of the show is a “might makes right” smackdown where Athrun and Kira beat the crap out of Shinn and Rey, therefore communism is wrong, instead of the new cast developing and solving their own problems. This is the equivalent of Beren and Luthien randomly showing up to defeat Sauron at the end of Lord of the Rings, or Amuro beating Paptimus instead of Kamille, or Godric Gryffindor rising from the dead to defeat Voldemort instead of Harry. So… I love the POTENTIAL that Destiny had in the same way that some people think “oh the Star Wars prequels would be awesome except for X, Y, and Z.” I adore the characters and the animating impulses rather than the way things played out.
What does that have to do with anything? I’m not sure. But it gives me a sense of hope that whatever I’m doing, I’m not stupider than Fukuda, who thinks that Iraq is the reason SEED Destiny isn’t popular in the US. It also means that I’m more attached to the character than I am to the canon, which I think gives me a greater flexibility to take the character out of canon context for a long time. I can send him off getting angry at new things without feeling too guilty for not having him back on the PLANTs.
Oh, and if something with his voice is wrong, no one has mentioned anything in three years, so uh. I guess I’m cool.
Euphie SAME PROBLEM WITH GEASS. Like. IT STARTED OUT PRETTY COOL AND THEN IT TURNED REALLY HILARIOUS. But I still like Euphie. She’s very nice, which isn’t something I can say for the rest of my characters. She’s a very, very flexible character in that she can do crack or seriousness, and she’s very easy to build affectionate relationships with.
The reason I apped Euphie is actually because of the relationships she has with other people - “I know we’re going to get a Geass cast, and I want to be part of it. I love her you’re-my-protector-but-I’ll-try-to-provide-emotional-support relationship with Suzaku and the fact that she’s the one who ultimately tops Lelouch with goodness and sugar and sparkles.” Euphie’s very much a pretty pretty princess character - she’s no warrior princess or tactical genius - but she wants to be more than that, which makes her go out and do things, which makes her really easy to play. She actively seeks to help people and get involved with them and support them, she can be flexible and meet other characters’ needs, and she can KEEP A CONVERSATION GOING. This is a godsend. Like, “Did you stop talking to me? I’ll change the subject and we can keep threading.” THIS MAKES HER WICKED EASY unless I run out of things to say which does happen a lot with serious threads or when we’ve threaded a whole bunch, sorry.
My main issue with her voice was always that I kept hearing Chantal Strand, but her English VA sounds like Chantal Strand, so whatever, I’m totally set.
Ben okay, so, LotF - GENERALLY - suffers the same problem as Geass: until about book six of nine, it had the potential to be really cool, and then the last book sort of jumped the shark (NANOVIRUSES AND HOT CHICKS FOR ALL!). It did keep Luke from fixing everyone’s problems, which is an up on Destiny. HOWEVER. Only the main storyline jumped the shark. I was reading the books for Ben, and I wasn’t disappointed. He goes from being this doofy kid who hangs around with his cousin to “oh man I’m so quasi-evil, wtf” to RAAAAAAAGE YOU KILLED MY MOM to neutral good. He does this all despite being, like, the most underpowered character in the whole damn series because he’s smart and has great common sense. Talking Tahiri out of Sithdom is a good show of emotional development without him doing something silly and obviously out of his league like defeating Jacen.
He’s also sort of a smartass and will mouth off to anyone and I don’t care that he’s a backburner because he sort of just wanders around on his own in the books anyway. He also allows me to indulge my eternal Star Wars fangeekery with none of the EXPECTATIONS I’d have if I played a movie character again.
Also, his voice is wicked easy.
Kanmuri I’m running out of steam but I love Kanmuri because he’s a dork and he does exaggerated reactions to things and spends all the time going “wtf are you people doing” but then “AHA I UNDERSTAND! BREAD ENTHUSIASM GO!” Yakipan is such an exaggerated manga. I love playing characters who react in that sort of exaggerated way. And his icons.
Allelujah trufax, I like Halle better and think he’s easier to play because he has so much more momentum. Allelujah alone of all my characters cannot force a conversation forward, which makes him difficult. So I have to rely on YOU, THE PERSON I’M THREADING WITH to keep things going, because Allelujah is sort of passive in smalltalk..
Sheryl okay, her app was REALLY HARD so halfway through I thought “should I just app Ranka instead? She’d be really easy” but. I wanted to app Sheryl. She’s so self-confident and energetic and tough and adventurous and I really do like assertive characters, and at the same time she has this deredere side and a giddy “uwaaaaah” side and she loves trying new things and seriously, what’s not to love there? This girl can BOWL PEOPLE OVER and look fabulous while doing it.
She’s also just off-the-wall wacky and wacky things happen to her, so she can lose her shirt and I don’t feel like I’m going over the line with fanservice; it happened in the show. Fuck, there was a whole episode about her underwear. Which brings me to my next point: that she’s crazy. Her whole worldview is crazy. She thinks that putting on power armor to chase around a school and slam into windows to regain her lost underwear is a good idea. She thinks that if her bathtub won’t fit through a door, it’s time to move. She’s just. Easily the most OUTRAGEOUS of my characters. And that’s fun.
idk whether I have her voice, but no one’s said they have a problem yet, so I can’t be that bad.
Shinn: I apped Shinn because I wanted a canon I was familiar with making fun of. That canon was Gundam SEED Destiny, which I did doofy parodies of once a week. That character was Shinn by virtue of the fact that I hadn’t seen all of SEED and thus couldn’t app Athrun, who I think is really hot.
I loooooooooove Shinn. He’s sort of like a human pinball. If he gets launched in one direction he will HURTLE THERE AT TOP SPEEDS with no concern for smacking into the little metal bars they stick into pinball machines. And then something emo happens to him and he drifts back through the pinball machine all sadly until BAM you shoot him off again and he hits things some more and comes out looking a little sillier for metaphorically running into the wall that is metaphorical Athrun but starting the process all over again. He has so much energy and he’s so passionate about stuff. He’s also tsuntsuntsunRAGEtsundere. He’s soooo cuuute.
Now, let me say something about SEED Destiny. It actually applies to all of my canons but 00 and Frontier, which are unfinished. I like the idea of Destiny more than I like what happened. I actually adore everything that happens in Destiny up until ZAFT’s attack on Orb, at which point Team Archangel starts beating the crap out of the new cast. Rather than letting the new characters solve problems, the old cast fixes everything. It’s really an unsatisfying ending, because, in the end, the new cast never overcomes any great challenge. The end of the show is a “might makes right” smackdown where Athrun and Kira beat the crap out of Shinn and Rey, therefore communism is wrong, instead of the new cast developing and solving their own problems. This is the equivalent of Beren and Luthien randomly showing up to defeat Sauron at the end of Lord of the Rings, or Amuro beating Paptimus instead of Kamille, or Godric Gryffindor rising from the dead to defeat Voldemort instead of Harry. So… I love the POTENTIAL that Destiny had in the same way that some people think “oh the Star Wars prequels would be awesome except for X, Y, and Z.” I adore the characters and the animating impulses rather than the way things played out.
What does that have to do with anything? I’m not sure. But it gives me a sense of hope that whatever I’m doing, I’m not stupider than Fukuda, who thinks that Iraq is the reason SEED Destiny isn’t popular in the US. It also means that I’m more attached to the character than I am to the canon, which I think gives me a greater flexibility to take the character out of canon context for a long time. I can send him off getting angry at new things without feeling too guilty for not having him back on the PLANTs.
Oh, and if something with his voice is wrong, no one has mentioned anything in three years, so uh. I guess I’m cool.
Euphie SAME PROBLEM WITH GEASS. Like. IT STARTED OUT PRETTY COOL AND THEN IT TURNED REALLY HILARIOUS. But I still like Euphie. She’s very nice, which isn’t something I can say for the rest of my characters. She’s a very, very flexible character in that she can do crack or seriousness, and she’s very easy to build affectionate relationships with.
The reason I apped Euphie is actually because of the relationships she has with other people - “I know we’re going to get a Geass cast, and I want to be part of it. I love her you’re-my-protector-but-I’ll-try-to-provide-emotional-support relationship with Suzaku and the fact that she’s the one who ultimately tops Lelouch with goodness and sugar and sparkles.” Euphie’s very much a pretty pretty princess character - she’s no warrior princess or tactical genius - but she wants to be more than that, which makes her go out and do things, which makes her really easy to play. She actively seeks to help people and get involved with them and support them, she can be flexible and meet other characters’ needs, and she can KEEP A CONVERSATION GOING. This is a godsend. Like, “Did you stop talking to me? I’ll change the subject and we can keep threading.” THIS MAKES HER WICKED EASY unless I run out of things to say which does happen a lot with serious threads or when we’ve threaded a whole bunch, sorry.
My main issue with her voice was always that I kept hearing Chantal Strand, but her English VA sounds like Chantal Strand, so whatever, I’m totally set.
Ben okay, so, LotF - GENERALLY - suffers the same problem as Geass: until about book six of nine, it had the potential to be really cool, and then the last book sort of jumped the shark (NANOVIRUSES AND HOT CHICKS FOR ALL!). It did keep Luke from fixing everyone’s problems, which is an up on Destiny. HOWEVER. Only the main storyline jumped the shark. I was reading the books for Ben, and I wasn’t disappointed. He goes from being this doofy kid who hangs around with his cousin to “oh man I’m so quasi-evil, wtf” to RAAAAAAAGE YOU KILLED MY MOM to neutral good. He does this all despite being, like, the most underpowered character in the whole damn series because he’s smart and has great common sense. Talking Tahiri out of Sithdom is a good show of emotional development without him doing something silly and obviously out of his league like defeating Jacen.
He’s also sort of a smartass and will mouth off to anyone and I don’t care that he’s a backburner because he sort of just wanders around on his own in the books anyway. He also allows me to indulge my eternal Star Wars fangeekery with none of the EXPECTATIONS I’d have if I played a movie character again.
Also, his voice is wicked easy.
Kanmuri I’m running out of steam but I love Kanmuri because he’s a dork and he does exaggerated reactions to things and spends all the time going “wtf are you people doing” but then “AHA I UNDERSTAND! BREAD ENTHUSIASM GO!” Yakipan is such an exaggerated manga. I love playing characters who react in that sort of exaggerated way. And his icons.
Allelujah trufax, I like Halle better and think he’s easier to play because he has so much more momentum. Allelujah alone of all my characters cannot force a conversation forward, which makes him difficult. So I have to rely on YOU, THE PERSON I’M THREADING WITH to keep things going, because Allelujah is sort of passive in smalltalk..
Sheryl okay, her app was REALLY HARD so halfway through I thought “should I just app Ranka instead? She’d be really easy” but. I wanted to app Sheryl. She’s so self-confident and energetic and tough and adventurous and I really do like assertive characters, and at the same time she has this deredere side and a giddy “uwaaaaah” side and she loves trying new things and seriously, what’s not to love there? This girl can BOWL PEOPLE OVER and look fabulous while doing it.
She’s also just off-the-wall wacky and wacky things happen to her, so she can lose her shirt and I don’t feel like I’m going over the line with fanservice; it happened in the show. Fuck, there was a whole episode about her underwear. Which brings me to my next point: that she’s crazy. Her whole worldview is crazy. She thinks that putting on power armor to chase around a school and slam into windows to regain her lost underwear is a good idea. She thinks that if her bathtub won’t fit through a door, it’s time to move. She’s just. Easily the most OUTRAGEOUS of my characters. And that’s fun.
idk whether I have her voice, but no one’s said they have a problem yet, so I can’t be that bad.