(no subject)
Sep. 3rd, 2011 04:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kay_alphaI went back and poked at a silly crack!fic Fairy Tail/Kingdom Hearts crossover earlier today... and now it doesn't want to be crack!fic anymore. I ended up rewriting it completely from about halfway through, and now it's trying to turn into the first chapter of a longer story. Which, hey, might be fun to write. IDK. Anyway, I need to rewatch all the cutscenes involving Kairi because she's trying to talk to Erza while the boys are off being idiots, and I don't have as good a grasp on her character. Also, I need a better idea of the plot.
I was pondering the Last Order-Accelerator dynamic earlier today, trying to decide what it is about them that interests me, and noticed a pattern. Last Order is a young girl who's much more dangerous than she looks, much more familiar with death and violence than most children her age (and most adults in her setting), targeted repeatedly by people who want to use her abilities to cause damage that she wouldn't approve of, and most of the time acts like a ten-year-old girl. A very energetic, naive ten-year-old who plays and argues with her big brother and doesn't seem even remotely jaded.
Accelerator is her very, very cynical big brother-figurer who is so committed to protecting her that would let himself get shot rather than let her die, has a very nasty past where he killed a LOT of innocent people, and lets himself bicker with Last Order as if they were normal children when she's not in danger.
This pair of descriptions sounds an awful lot like Ivy and Kincaid and Eve and Train (Dresden Files and Black Cat, respectively), who are my favorite characters in their respective settings. With Even and Train, that's not so remarkable-- they're two of the three main characters in their manga/anime-- but Ivy's appeared in all of three Dresden File books if you count a phone call where she didn't even speak, and Kincaid's only marginally more apparent. So I feel like this is a Significant Pattern that says something about my tastes in fiction.
Which is very strange, because if you'd asked me what I like about Last Order and Accelerator a day ago, I would have mentioned some very fandom-specific things, namely the various implications of the fact that most of people Accelerator killed before he turned sorta-good were Last Order's clone sisters. Whose memories she has access to. Including the memories of when he killed them. That has a lot of implications in her decision to forgive him and suggests considerably more emotional maturity than the rest of her actions would indicate.
Oddly enough, though, that brings me back to common threads between the three pairs because Eve and Ivy both have their own emotional hidden depths. It's a bit less surprising with them-- they aren't as bubbly or impulsive as Last Order, and their dark/dangerous/mature sides are presented before or concurrent with the more childlike aspects of their personalities-- but they both have a fair amount of awareness of the nastier side of human nature, Eve because she was raised and trained to be a obedient killing machine and Ivy because she has several millenia's worth of memories plus all the written knowledge of humanity. Despite this (or more specifically, because of the atypical nature of their upbringing) they often come off as very young, taken unself-conscious pleasure in things their peers tend to take for granted. It's probably that contrast that I like so much about those characters.
As for their protectors, there's a bit more variation. Accelerator has by far the most to atone for and shows the most guilt; though Train and Kincaid both have impressive body counts in their backgrounds, Train's targets were mostly bad people and he's had several years to come to terms with his past by the time he meets Eve, and Kincaid doesn't really show guilt over the people he's killed. There's still some guilt in both cases (in Kincaid's case from his failure to save Ivy's grandmother and mother), though, and that ties into their relationships with the girls. It's probably most distant in Train's case-- unlike the other two, he had no involvement with the bad things that have happened to Eve-- and that influences the way he treats Eve: instead of treating her like someone to make amends to because of a past failure, he sees her as a younger version of himself who he can show the path to redemption early on rather than letting her continue on for years as he did. He's still somewhat protective of her, but it's the protectiveness of a mentor making sure his student isn't in over her head. Kincaid's also somewhat less protective of Ivy than Accelerator is of Last Order, but that might be because Ivy can kick his ass in most situations. In that sense, it's Last Order who's the exception: both Ivy and Eve are able and willing to use their abilities to defend themselves, whereas Last Order is not. I'm not sure how much of it is "willing" and how much is "able" in Last Order's case, since she tends to get abducted off-screen. It may be that she doesn't get the chance-- the people going after her know exactly what she's capable and could probably take precautions against her electrokinesis-- or that she's unwilling to inpinge upon the other clones' free wills too much. It might also be that she doesn't need to very much. Accelerator is considerably more dangerous than either Kincaid or Train and does not hesitate to use his abilities to the fullest to keep her safe. (It should probably be said that I don't think reluctance to use violence is at play here: Last Order is established as being both able to block Accelerator's access to the Misaka network, which he is dependent upon for using his power, and aware of what he's capable of in battle. At some level, she must know she's enabling him to hurt other people, so she's presumably of the opinion that violence is not something to be avoided at all costs.)
I'm not sure how much the guilt-motivated protector factor is at play here-- I liked Ivy and Kincaid before that revelation, and it's not nearly as apparent in Train-- but I definitely think the family dynamics are. It's slightly different for all three: Kincaid is a father figure, but purely in an emotional sense, Accelerator is the super-overprotective flavor of big brother, and Train is the "help you and encourage you in your goals" flavor of big brother. But they're all found families as opposed to genetic, which is something I like in my fiction in general.
There's probably more going on at a subconscious level, but hell if I know what it is.
I was pondering the Last Order-Accelerator dynamic earlier today, trying to decide what it is about them that interests me, and noticed a pattern. Last Order is a young girl who's much more dangerous than she looks, much more familiar with death and violence than most children her age (and most adults in her setting), targeted repeatedly by people who want to use her abilities to cause damage that she wouldn't approve of, and most of the time acts like a ten-year-old girl. A very energetic, naive ten-year-old who plays and argues with her big brother and doesn't seem even remotely jaded.
Accelerator is her very, very cynical big brother-figurer who is so committed to protecting her that would let himself get shot rather than let her die, has a very nasty past where he killed a LOT of innocent people, and lets himself bicker with Last Order as if they were normal children when she's not in danger.
This pair of descriptions sounds an awful lot like Ivy and Kincaid and Eve and Train (Dresden Files and Black Cat, respectively), who are my favorite characters in their respective settings. With Even and Train, that's not so remarkable-- they're two of the three main characters in their manga/anime-- but Ivy's appeared in all of three Dresden File books if you count a phone call where she didn't even speak, and Kincaid's only marginally more apparent. So I feel like this is a Significant Pattern that says something about my tastes in fiction.
Which is very strange, because if you'd asked me what I like about Last Order and Accelerator a day ago, I would have mentioned some very fandom-specific things, namely the various implications of the fact that most of people Accelerator killed before he turned sorta-good were Last Order's clone sisters. Whose memories she has access to. Including the memories of when he killed them. That has a lot of implications in her decision to forgive him and suggests considerably more emotional maturity than the rest of her actions would indicate.
Oddly enough, though, that brings me back to common threads between the three pairs because Eve and Ivy both have their own emotional hidden depths. It's a bit less surprising with them-- they aren't as bubbly or impulsive as Last Order, and their dark/dangerous/mature sides are presented before or concurrent with the more childlike aspects of their personalities-- but they both have a fair amount of awareness of the nastier side of human nature, Eve because she was raised and trained to be a obedient killing machine and Ivy because she has several millenia's worth of memories plus all the written knowledge of humanity. Despite this (or more specifically, because of the atypical nature of their upbringing) they often come off as very young, taken unself-conscious pleasure in things their peers tend to take for granted. It's probably that contrast that I like so much about those characters.
As for their protectors, there's a bit more variation. Accelerator has by far the most to atone for and shows the most guilt; though Train and Kincaid both have impressive body counts in their backgrounds, Train's targets were mostly bad people and he's had several years to come to terms with his past by the time he meets Eve, and Kincaid doesn't really show guilt over the people he's killed. There's still some guilt in both cases (in Kincaid's case from his failure to save Ivy's grandmother and mother), though, and that ties into their relationships with the girls. It's probably most distant in Train's case-- unlike the other two, he had no involvement with the bad things that have happened to Eve-- and that influences the way he treats Eve: instead of treating her like someone to make amends to because of a past failure, he sees her as a younger version of himself who he can show the path to redemption early on rather than letting her continue on for years as he did. He's still somewhat protective of her, but it's the protectiveness of a mentor making sure his student isn't in over her head. Kincaid's also somewhat less protective of Ivy than Accelerator is of Last Order, but that might be because Ivy can kick his ass in most situations. In that sense, it's Last Order who's the exception: both Ivy and Eve are able and willing to use their abilities to defend themselves, whereas Last Order is not. I'm not sure how much of it is "willing" and how much is "able" in Last Order's case, since she tends to get abducted off-screen. It may be that she doesn't get the chance-- the people going after her know exactly what she's capable and could probably take precautions against her electrokinesis-- or that she's unwilling to inpinge upon the other clones' free wills too much. It might also be that she doesn't need to very much. Accelerator is considerably more dangerous than either Kincaid or Train and does not hesitate to use his abilities to the fullest to keep her safe. (It should probably be said that I don't think reluctance to use violence is at play here: Last Order is established as being both able to block Accelerator's access to the Misaka network, which he is dependent upon for using his power, and aware of what he's capable of in battle. At some level, she must know she's enabling him to hurt other people, so she's presumably of the opinion that violence is not something to be avoided at all costs.)
I'm not sure how much the guilt-motivated protector factor is at play here-- I liked Ivy and Kincaid before that revelation, and it's not nearly as apparent in Train-- but I definitely think the family dynamics are. It's slightly different for all three: Kincaid is a father figure, but purely in an emotional sense, Accelerator is the super-overprotective flavor of big brother, and Train is the "help you and encourage you in your goals" flavor of big brother. But they're all found families as opposed to genetic, which is something I like in my fiction in general.
There's probably more going on at a subconscious level, but hell if I know what it is.