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.

Comments

[hooves]

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]

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]

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]

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

Re: Please excuse my ranting!

[crimsonmorgan]

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]

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

[kiu22]

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]

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!)