Mass Effect is weird for my fannishness.
Nov. 28th, 2010 02:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eleanorjaneI've been stretching my gaming wings lately, trying things that had fallen by the wayside in the last half-decade of MMO playing, and naturally I've been thinking about it fannishly.
My current addiction is Mass Effect, an amazing RPG from BioWare (and yeah, I'm probably the last gamer in the world to have played it. I blame WoW, okay?), where you play Lt. Commander Shepard, a human soldier hunting down an alien agent. Shepard's quite customisable, both appearance-wise and storywise - you can choose several key features of your past, and your ongoing personality is approximated by storyline options that award 'paragon' or 'renegade' quality, which opens up more character options and plot points.
And several of my friends are playing it too, and of course we've been talking about it, and naturally I went looking for Mass Effect fic, too. And there's this weird cognitive dissonance that keeps striking me.
When it comes to fanfic about books, TV, movies, anime, whatever, I'm used to the canon version of a character (and usually the fanon versions too). And in most video game fandoms, you've usually got one of several situations:
- Games where the extent of characterisation is 'what they look like' or 'what unique skills they have' (most FPSes).
- Games where the characters have personalities but they're fixed and the player experience doesn't change them (eg Left 4 Dead).
- Games where there are a bajillion permutations of class/race/gender/personality/storyline, so the characters are effectively OCs and fandom tends to focus on the NPCs (most MMOs).
And then you've got this odd little niche of RPGs, where the player characters are the ones people (mostly) write about, but there's actually no true canon for them. Lieutenant Commander Shepard can be a military brat or a former street kid; a paragon or a renegade; xenophobic or pro-diversity. My Shepard is a fierce red-headed woman, capable and compassionate, the very model of the noble Systems Alliance soldier. My friend's Shepard is a big tough guy with manly stubble and a mean squint, who doesn't deal well with authority but who gets the job done. And J. P. Fanwriter's Shepard is, clearly, different again.
All of which means that Mass Effect fic winds up making me want to yell "...but Shepard wouldn't do that" because I'm so attached to my Shepard. Which isn't the writers' faults, it's just the nature of the beast - but it's something I hadn't really articulated to myself until the last few days, and it makes me rather glad I didn't request Mass Effect fic for Yuletide after all.
My current addiction is Mass Effect, an amazing RPG from BioWare (and yeah, I'm probably the last gamer in the world to have played it. I blame WoW, okay?), where you play Lt. Commander Shepard, a human soldier hunting down an alien agent. Shepard's quite customisable, both appearance-wise and storywise - you can choose several key features of your past, and your ongoing personality is approximated by storyline options that award 'paragon' or 'renegade' quality, which opens up more character options and plot points.
And several of my friends are playing it too, and of course we've been talking about it, and naturally I went looking for Mass Effect fic, too. And there's this weird cognitive dissonance that keeps striking me.
When it comes to fanfic about books, TV, movies, anime, whatever, I'm used to the canon version of a character (and usually the fanon versions too). And in most video game fandoms, you've usually got one of several situations:
- Games where the extent of characterisation is 'what they look like' or 'what unique skills they have' (most FPSes).
- Games where the characters have personalities but they're fixed and the player experience doesn't change them (eg Left 4 Dead).
- Games where there are a bajillion permutations of class/race/gender/personality/storyline, so the characters are effectively OCs and fandom tends to focus on the NPCs (most MMOs).
And then you've got this odd little niche of RPGs, where the player characters are the ones people (mostly) write about, but there's actually no true canon for them. Lieutenant Commander Shepard can be a military brat or a former street kid; a paragon or a renegade; xenophobic or pro-diversity. My Shepard is a fierce red-headed woman, capable and compassionate, the very model of the noble Systems Alliance soldier. My friend's Shepard is a big tough guy with manly stubble and a mean squint, who doesn't deal well with authority but who gets the job done. And J. P. Fanwriter's Shepard is, clearly, different again.
All of which means that Mass Effect fic winds up making me want to yell "...but Shepard wouldn't do that" because I'm so attached to my Shepard. Which isn't the writers' faults, it's just the nature of the beast - but it's something I hadn't really articulated to myself until the last few days, and it makes me rather glad I didn't request Mass Effect fic for Yuletide after all.