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mmxwritingcircle[Insert my old adage of this fandom being so high-strung that it stifled creativity and got trapped in the vicious circle of technically good artists only drawing game scene reenactments, canon-compliant fic, or worse: novelizations and how this accelerated the fandom death.]
So, stuff you want to see and stuff you want to burn in hell.
+ Silliness in general. Only in MMX I wish for things like coffeeshop AUS, movie night prompts, and those things that are often considered the bane of megafandoms. But I do cross the line at High School and Contemporary Mundane AUs, I'm trash but not THAT kind of trash.
+ Female character centered stuff that's not fap material to fanboys, even if it's not my focus at the moment. Alia (SCIENCE HERO) is cool! Marino is cool! But please don't use them for clichéd het romance, that, we already have too much.
+ Noblebright and positive what-ifs. Yup, MMX is a dark, dark canon even with the goofy animaloids and the neon-colored robots. But I always saw the darkness as a result of incompetence than just ~~fate~~. Make Dr. Light, Cain or even X marginally intelligent, the world changes for the better. Many of the darker stuff on the later games was pastede on yay, IMO.
- Novelizations. We're in 2015, we have the Wiki, we have Let's Plays. There's no need to masturbate your own ego on a 500k+ saga that basically retreads stuff that everyone knows. This kind of thing is the #1 source of fandom snobbery on the fandom-producing side.
- Grimdark. Bringing the dark stuff that's implied on the games isn't a bad thing by itself, the problem is that it has been done to death. Most of time, pastede on yay and with no nuance whatsoever. It does not look mature, guys — it SCREAMS 13-year-old boy posting at ff.net for the very first time. And in the great majority of cases, it cheapens the actual tragedy for shock value.
- Cataclysm theory, AKA "Zero killed everyone at the end of Classic" and the "gentler" variants like "Light family got murdered": NO. NO. CLOSE YOUR WORD DOCUMENT RIGHT NOW. DELETE YOUR FF.NET/AO3 ACCOUNT. LOWER YOUR HEAD. YOU DID IT WRONG.YOU FUCKED UP. GO LISTEN TO LINKIN PARK, KIDDO.
So, stuff you want to see and stuff you want to burn in hell.
+ Silliness in general. Only in MMX I wish for things like coffeeshop AUS, movie night prompts, and those things that are often considered the bane of megafandoms. But I do cross the line at High School and Contemporary Mundane AUs, I'm trash but not THAT kind of trash.
+ Female character centered stuff that's not fap material to fanboys, even if it's not my focus at the moment. Alia (SCIENCE HERO) is cool! Marino is cool! But please don't use them for clichéd het romance, that, we already have too much.
+ Noblebright and positive what-ifs. Yup, MMX is a dark, dark canon even with the goofy animaloids and the neon-colored robots. But I always saw the darkness as a result of incompetence than just ~~fate~~. Make Dr. Light, Cain or even X marginally intelligent, the world changes for the better. Many of the darker stuff on the later games was pastede on yay, IMO.
- Novelizations. We're in 2015, we have the Wiki, we have Let's Plays. There's no need to masturbate your own ego on a 500k+ saga that basically retreads stuff that everyone knows. This kind of thing is the #1 source of fandom snobbery on the fandom-producing side.
- Grimdark. Bringing the dark stuff that's implied on the games isn't a bad thing by itself, the problem is that it has been done to death. Most of time, pastede on yay and with no nuance whatsoever. It does not look mature, guys — it SCREAMS 13-year-old boy posting at ff.net for the very first time. And in the great majority of cases, it cheapens the actual tragedy for shock value.
- Cataclysm theory, AKA "Zero killed everyone at the end of Classic" and the "gentler" variants like "Light family got murdered": NO. NO. CLOSE YOUR WORD DOCUMENT RIGHT NOW. DELETE YOUR FF.NET/AO3 ACCOUNT. LOWER YOUR HEAD. YOU DID IT WRONG.YOU FUCKED UP. GO LISTEN TO LINKIN PARK, KIDDO.
no subject
Date: 2015-07-26 07:01 pm (UTC)+ World building. For a series who's plot is revolved around a fierce war between Reploids, Mavericks, and humans, they sure don't establish a lot of basic world building. I want to see things like the relationships between Reploids and humans, what specific prejudices the Reploids face, what laws (if any) are placed on Reploids, etc. (I have a lot of headcanons myself on those subjects, but I'd love to see what other people think.)
+ Character relationships/building. While we get to see a lot of shipping stuff, I don't think we really see much from fics other than superficial/basic character dynamics. When X and Zero aren't busy Maverick hunting, what do they do to hang out? Chat? Watch videos?
Make out?What about their relationships with other Maverick hunters? Do they ignore them? Try to train them? Encourage them? That's not even getting into characters like Alia, Nana, Axl, and more.+ Portrayals of mental illness/neurodivergency with the Reploids. This one's a little personal, but still. Let's face it, a lot of the the characters in MMX most likely need therapy for all the crap they've been through. I want to see symptoms/portrayals of how other characters think/feel. I can imagine characters like Nana or X and maybe even Zero having PTSD, anxiety disorders, BPD, etc. Capcom tries to show that in some games, but it's obviously superficial stuff meant to be dramatic than actually giving the characters depth. I figure that fans could do better!
no subject
Date: 2015-07-26 08:18 pm (UTC)For world building and reploid prejudices, again I'll rec rowbutt with her Active Time series. Yes, shippy, but explores the creepiest interpretation of why we don't see the characters just hanging out: they stay on their rechargers while not working; no free time at all.
The reason we latch so hard to Command Mission is that it answers some really basic stuff about X, even in the form of a bonus area: X likes to collect figurines, cares about his appearance enough to make his holo scarf change color and also enjoys music and schematics.
While I don't have many works under my belt, my X in my RP blog indefinite-variable clearly has an anxiety disorder. It's partially a projection of mine, but yup, it's there. Even in Maid.doc, which is silly stuff, he shows some symptoms.
headcanon ramblings :)
Date: 2015-07-27 03:29 am (UTC)Some things I definitely think happen though - especially during the times when cameras and crazy game producers are looking the other way, filtered through being a heavy Zero RPer:
Trio has a long-standing tradition of Movie Night. The preference is for 80's action movies and, of course, ANYTHING humans make involving robots. There are usually "drinking" games. Axl usually has to be gotten extra drunk/overcharged so he doesn't start screaming about the way humans are using the guns wrong, failing to count the ammo, and generally making impossible shots. (However, the movie nights were started by Axl and it's his movie collection that gets picked from.) Each month, a different Unit is responsible for hosting. Much boisterous making fun of the bad tech, technobabble and mocking of robot stereotypes happens. X gets twitchy when robots and humans fight each other in the movies. Takes place in the 0th Comm since the event keeps getting bigger and bigger as the months go on.
Zero's hobbies are deeply Japanese - he calligraphs, meditates, reads the Hagakure like it's the Bible, practices sword/kendo, practices tea ceremony, and also has a pet bonsai that he's magically managed to keep alive through several base changes and several major uprisings. That and an ancient scroll of calligraphy that was gifted to him are his most precious possessions. He cooks - but likes everything 900000 degrees hot because otherwise he can't taste it, and he also can't be left alone in a kitchen because he likes the way fire looks on a stove. He is an ideal BBQ chef because it combines burninating things and cooking meat, which is one of his favorite 'human' foods.
He has been having therapy for his PTSD, and switched therapists not too long ago when he started talking more openly about his relationship with X and Axl, and detected that this honesty was making his therapist squirm.
Axl is starting to get into figure collecting because of X, but left to his own devices collects old weapons, particularly vintage pistols and ammunition of various weird makes. Will rant for HOURS if you start him off by discussing gunblades. Collects an abandoned shell or cartridge from every battle he takes part in (and survives) and has it engraved with the date. He's got a small bucket full of these.
Axl blows off steam by making (and distributing) porn, movies, comic books, songs and bits of media. He collects old media ravenously. He kind of acts like the inhouse Hunter storage cloud for all things unofficial and Hunter related. He also tends to spy on people through tiny insect-sized cameras he plants all over his surroundings - but the reason he does this is because he needs to know everything going on around him at all times as part of his ongoing need to have security by getting advance warning of all things. He's an inveterate (but discreet!) gossip, and knows what's going on with almost everyone on base at all times, but is also friends with almost everyone he meets.
He is also politically conservative in a way that X and Zero aren't, which has led to some interesting yelling matches at times. And he's a limited savant when it comes to math - when it comes to the necessary math that allows him to make sniper shots and pull off complicated feats of ballistics, he has the best math subroutines of any Hunter. He is terrible at doing day to day math, but he can knock up shots and take out targets with terrifying accuracy from ridiculous distances without even thinking about it. Additionally, his skills as a mimic allow him to catch the subtlest changes of expression and mood by reading people's body languages and faces, which can all combine to make it feel like Axl can mindread and is impossible to keep a secret from. If there's shenanigans he's usually not far away (or knows about the plans) but he also is deeply concerned with being taken seriously as a Hunter and a professional.
For me X is probably my least developed set of headcanons, and I tend to follow deniisu's lead on some of it - especially with X as figure collector as a primary hobby after Command Mission. I also headcanon that X really would like to get out of being a field combatant and move toward reploid medicine, feeling like this would be a more peaceful way to live with his 'children' in such a way where he could impact their lives more positively than he currently is. However, the Federation refuses to allow him to transfer or change roles. He keeps trying to go through channels to make this happen, but is reluctant to outright quit the Hunters for a number of reasons, including not wanting to leave Zero and Axl behind, and out of a grim awareness of just what happens every time he DOES stop fighting.
I headcanon X as being an enormously effective medic though, and he uses this on the field as well when he needs to. I see him jumping at the chance to do rescue missions and humanitarian work - these excite him far more than 'go kill all the Mavericks' missions. And as the prototype reploid with infinite potential, I feel there are a number of unexplored angles of his character still to be investigated - lately I've been fascinated by the idea of his being able to 'facilitate the evolution of robots in the same manner as life' and have been looking into ideas of how Reploids might reproduce without human intervention or 'building more robots'.
Our lil' fandom is WAY behind Transformers on this front, as an aside.
I'm also incredibly fascinated by exploring the ramifications of a sensitive, emotional reploid like X gradually giving into a subtler form of PTSD and simply cutting off his emotions. This to me should have been one of the core arcs in the series, it's miserable that it wasn't, and the journey from X to "Copy X" is worth examining in greater detail.
I would also rec "Rusted Gears" by skycompass - her new fic that shows the Hunters from the POV of a newb - we share a lot of headcanons about how the Hunters work, and some of the institutional challenges that everyday Hunters would face will likely show up in there eventually. One to watch ;D
no subject
Date: 2015-07-27 03:42 am (UTC)+ More gen. I'm as guilty as anyone - maybe even more so. But I feel like a lot of fics are now just 'smash two characters together, add a kink, plop the result on Ao3'. Worlds Unite has a lot of problems, but it's whet my desire to see just straight up Adventure Heroes stuff happening. The problem is that gen underperforms - at least when I write it. :( And gen IS hard - there's a lot of moving parts in a good gen fic, and it's hard to get people to care about it if it isn't Gay Luv X/Zero #9,903,833.
+ Rare pairs. I do my part, but I'm always hungry for more and more and more. I want to see how other characters bounce off, change and manipulate the core trio. It's all relationships with me.
+ Porn that brings something to to the table. Anyone can write porn. Anyone can slam two characters together and yell "NOW KISS!" Make it something that changes the world. Or enlightens us to a new facet of the character. Or highlights a hidden aspect of the character. Something meaty and raw and where we really feel the place they're going to as something real, or raw, or terrible, or wonderful. Make me feel something.
- Infantilizing Axl. Stop it right now. Axl's very first on screen appearance is a murder. Stop treating him like he's 12. He can be a junior Hunter and still be competent, fear-inspiring, vicious, or even a cold blooded killer. We've already seen he has the capacity to kill in cold blood when he has to. He shot Sigma in the fucking face. Stop making him some kind of baby. I see this way too much and it drives me nuts. Axl has emotional needs and clinginess - that's not the same as being childish. He also, lest we forget, murdered his entire previous 'family' without batting an obvious eye - only Red caused him to hesitate.
And let's not even get into the whole 'Axl perceives Zero as a replacement for Red' thing because DUH YES OF COURSE HE DOES?
- Cataclysm. Second. Drop that shit. Zero has enough psychological burdens and trauma. You wanting him to go against his core character and murder everyone just so you can bridge the gap between two series that actually weren't meant to directly connect? (protip: Wily and Light are in X as CAMEO APPEARANCES, it does NOT make them and Classic a consistent timeline, and neither does the end of the NONCANON arcade game just because Zero is in it argh)
no subject
Date: 2015-07-27 10:37 pm (UTC)Maybe if this comm thrives we can get more gen? Gen works sometimes are made for elaborating a point/headcanon for a group to see its application in the canon, so it's not that hopeless, I think.
As for the pastede on yay porn, I told you in skype, for now it's pretty much the work of just one writer with weird as fuck kinks on AO3, and even our sillier stuff has some thought put on it. We're not as prolific, but our stuff is way better received ;D
Infantilized Axl is something I see on works from younger writers who are obviously projecting on him. Yes, Axl is cute, it does not mean he's a useless baby. X suffers from the same problem, really.
no subject
Date: 2015-07-28 07:28 pm (UTC)+ On that note, a Pantheon / Olympic themed series of fics and / or fanart would be epic, in my opinion.
+ Moar Vile. And if not him or other villains, maybe shine some light on some of the secondary cast?
+ Lesyay: We got a small handfull of lovely reploid ladies, why not ship them together too?
(or just genderbend the dudes)+ Axl being the creepy tykebomb he is: Maybe more creepy in general too? I love creepy and horror.
And as for the dislikes, I agree with some of those up there, so I'll just add some others that bother the shit out of me when looking for fics, fanart, and ESPECIALLY roleplay:
- Improbable functions: I strongly believe that humans wouldn't want to make these robots too human. Even though by the time Megaman ZX came out, they practically were human, maybe almost in the same category as the cyborgs maybe... But that's then, which is hundreds of years after the X series. The most I can see in terms of human-like physical functions is the sex stuff, eating, sweating to keep cool and such (though the sweating thing is kinda out there too). I don't really think robots would ever need or want gag reflexes, but that's just me.
- Zero being portrayed as a total wimp and/or 100% asshole 24/7. If it's not done to X, it's done to Zero. It's like he can't even do anything on his own. Showing weakness shouldn't mean that Zero has to be portrayed as some emo wimp who can't even hold his sword let along beat a Met in combat. And emotionally? It's always CRAWWWWLLINNGG INNN MYY SKIIINNN, overplaying his deep, dark and edgy personality and. Also, an alternative is turning him into Shadow the Hedgehog. (sorry Shadz, but you're the poster boy of TOTAL. EDGE.)
no subject
Date: 2015-07-28 10:31 pm (UTC)For the human-like stuff, I choose only to put humanlike sex and eating (tertiary power source, not that efficient, it's for pleasure and bonding with humans and tasting poisons depending of the case). Why gag reflexes and refractory periods when their absence makes stuff more fun? 8DDDDDDDDDDDDDDD Sweating is borderline to me, I do believe their cooling systems are air-based instead of water-based (reploids breathe for cooling purposes, yeah)
Gotta be honest, I want to see legit femslash instead of genderbent stuff. Femslash X/Zero does not work for me for reasons I can't explain :/ I WANT BERKANA AND ALIA HAVING FUN AT THE DUNGEON FFS
no subject
Date: 2015-07-30 02:48 am (UTC)"Robots don't poop."
That's also why I personally have.....
+hermaphrodism
-robot assholes
Because if the robot does not need to poop, it does not need an anus. And if it wishes for sexual pleasure from being penetrated, why not go for a vagina? But then, that's just my thing, and I respect the panoply of robot sexual expression.
As for fairytales, that reminds me of the start of my last sadly abandoned Nanomango comic where MMX was presented as a fairytale to the MMZX generation... I should maybe adapt that into fic. Imagining the permutations of the stories over time, then the interactions with other fairytale tropes and even the influence of boardgames was interesting. The MMZX fairytale saw MMX though a centuries long lens...
no subject
Date: 2015-07-30 10:37 pm (UTC)I'm 100% OK with alternate genitalia, even if I only write the humanlike stuff. Maybe I can try my hand ai it later - one of my concerns would be how it would look like and that picture of Lumi/Bass/Rock (which for a second I though it was X) was quite educative :)
no subject
Date: 2015-07-31 03:08 am (UTC)