Fandom Promo!

[crantz]

Welcome to the Fandom Promo post, everyone!

Here's where you get those eyes on your fandoms for sign ups!

Share what makes your Yuletide fandoms the shiniest and why you love them. A big part of Yuletide is how small our fandoms can be, and this is a good way to make sure other people know what gems there are out there!

Suggested form to use:

<b>FANDOM NAME</b>:
<b>WHAT MAKES IT GREAT</b>:
<b>WHERE CAN I FIND IT?(optional)</b>:

Comments

Xenogears

[alterimpulse]

Fandom name: Xenogears
What makes it great: Do you like Neon Genesis Evangelion? Do you like RahXephon or Big O? Take all of that, throw it in a blender with everything from the Kabbalah to Thelema to a fuckton of sci-fi easter eggs from Star Trek and Star Wars to more to even more.

Or, as TV Tropes defines this game: Sigmund Freud has sex with the Holy Bible while Neon Genesis Evangelion operates the camera and Mobile Fighter G Gundam watches.

Or, as I did once with the assistance of being rather baked: a universe where a psychiatrist would be 1000 times more useful yet more of a Deus ex Machina than an actual god killing giant mecha.

This game is 20 years old this year, and it is one of "those" fandoms - but if you can get around all that, you have a ton of interesting space and sci-fi lore to explore, a massive universe set in deep time with lots of things to play with, canon hetero ships and a fuckton of slash subtext once you scratch the surface, some really amazing characters to work with, layers of plots and themes...and giant robots.

There are some major downsides: the game's visual and sound aside from music such as voices and battle sounds etc DEFINITELY shows its age (the anime sequences are especially shit) although the OST in full quality is amazing music and well worth a listen, the treatment of dissociative identity disorder for Fei also does show its age (and can be enraging or triggering from how badly it was written because Google and easy access to resources didn't exist back then, so the writers were obviously winging it from other media with not so good results), and the canon het ships can be squicky and near-sexist in their depiction (which may or may not have been on purpose so people intentionally looked for the slash - there's rumors that at least one writer and one character designer were shippers on board for at least Citan/Sigurd and Sigurd/Bart and for Sigurd being gay), and if you're heavily religious and don't like fandoms that play fast and loose with that, it's probably not going to be a fun play or watch for you.

Where can I Find It?
If you wish to play through the game, Amazon or Ebay and I think it's on the Playstation Store by now. Of course, you can also put on your own eyepatch and arr an emu, but there's a couple hard freeze glitches you'll need to beware of or work around with the emulation (I think they're random, based on graphical bugs? But know where they are and hit your save state before so you're not totally fucked if they happen).

If you're more interested in just the story/characters than actual gameplay for yourself? This is one fandom where that's more than okay! This is a more "literary" JRPG, and there's full dialogue scripts, longplays, character analyses, snarks, and much much MUCH more on the internet due to how old it is and... how it does tend to attract the sort of fans who like to go into even more exposition and overthought than a certain character in it you might really love or really hate does. ;)

(I personally highly recommend the LP by HCBailly - which is what got me into the fandom of all things so late - and the A Rope of Robots take among others, but just cruise around Youtube, and you'll find lots of varying quality and interestingness. And there's at least one full longplay there I think, too.)

Dialogue script is on gamefaqs. The game has its branch of the Xenosaga Wiki as the game that started it all (there's tons of sequels by this point that are "spiritual successors" and "cousin games" such as the Xenosaga games themselves, which are the nearer time prequels, and the Xenoblade games). There's also guardian.leamonde.net which is an awesome resource from back in the day and one of the few that hasn't been purged or memoryholed over an eternity of Internet time.

Re: Xenogears

[(Anonymous)]

Oh man, Xenogears! Bart/Billy was MY JAM back in the day. Thank you for this reminder to give it a re-play and reignite my feelings.

Re: Xenogears

[alterimpulse]

OMG they're my runner up third OTP to Citan/Fei and Citan/Sigurd.

(hopefully someone writes it in Yuletide this year! The fandom on AO3 is kinda dead and I feel like I'm spamming the section/screaming into the void LMAO)