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How to Write Serious Ike/Heather (if you must)
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blacklacelily and I were discussing this today for the hell of it, and I figured I'd write this up because I think it's pretty interesting, even though I have no intention (right now, anyway) of writing it myself.How to Write Serious Ike/Heather (if you must)
Soren must be dead. This is, in my opinion, non-negotiable. A better supported pairing like Ike/Elincia might get by with Soren in the way, if you're clever about it. Soren's influence would almost definitely overwhelm a pairing on as fragile terms as Ike/Heather, whether it's because Soren's cockblocking her, or vying for Ike's time, or making their encounters unpleasant, or what have you -- and I believe Ike and Heather don't have a strong enough pre-existing mutual desire to spend time together to make it seem worth the hassle.
Writing Ike/Heather is hard enough. Let's make it easy on ourselves, skip the possible character assassination, contrived shenanigans, and strange omissions, and just let Soren be dead.
The good news is, constraints inspire creativity. Soren's death is a great jumping point in several ways.
1. It establishes the setting. Soren can only die for real beginning in Part 4's endgame.
2. It suggests a premise.
Ike's departure at the end of the game is usually read in the context of the people close to him being alive and saved. Were that not the case -- if in fact, for the first time in his life, he'd failed to protect someone he cared about* -- Ike's departure could easily be read in quite a different light: hiding from his failure and his human limits.
* Greil doesn't count in his psyche, see the tone of: "In every battle that mattered in my life, I've always been the one left standing, no matter how slim my chances. This battle means more than any of the others, because it's for the life of every person that I've ever cared about. I will win this fight." He didn't fight to protect Greil, per se, so that's another matter.
This isn't all about Ike, obviously. Let's address Heather.
First of all, what about Heather being a lesbian? If I can avoid the accusations of homophobia, allow me to say that Heather being a lesbian is a strong inference and not an explicitly stated fact. That being said, I don't think it should be hand-waved ("she just hasn't met the right man!" "she's traumatized!") as it generally has been in Heather/man stories. I think we can better work around this with a dissociation between romantic interest and sexual interest. A chat with an asexual or aromantic person (or a few good internet articles, I suppose) can show you a world of possibilities here.
Maybe Heather's romantically interested in women only, but is okay with sex involving a penis. (Or maybe not quite, but I'm not interested in discussing the details of Heather's sexual interests here.)
Maybe Heather's only aroused by women, but is open to having a Homosexual Life Partner.
Or, if you trust yourself to be really careful with it, maybe Heather just flirts incessantly with women because Tellian culture is inclined toward women being the target of flirting, and she's actually bi (both romantically and sexually) albeit misandrist* on the surface.
I think they're all essentially viable. Pick one depending on what kind of "Ike/Heather" you're going for, I suppose. "Shipping" isn't particularly clear on whether we're talking about sex, love, or necessarily both. The matter of handling Ike's sexuality is similar, although the third is less of an option.
* I am aware that the word "misandry" is tied in with modern misogynist movements, but I use it here because it's less clunky than "man-hating".
While we're on the subject of misandry: for a minor character such as Heather, I think any serious fic that proposes to have her do strange things and keep her in-character must retain everything that canon purports to be important about her. In particular, I'm thinking of her relationship with her mother and her disdain toward men.
I think it's quite telling that Heather is her mother's primary caretaker, even resorting to thievery to do so (which Heather knows her mother doesn't approve of -- see her death quote, "Mother... Forgive me... I...lied... I stole... And this...is my punishment..."). I don't think this is a novel arrangement caused by her mother's recent illness. Her epilogue ("Heather returned home to care for her mother, swearing off her roguish ways. ...") says to me that this is an ongoing arrangement for a long-infirm parent.
The details of her mother's illness don't interest me, but the lack of mention of a father does. Combined with her disdain toward men, I'm inclined to think that he was some sort of irresponsible douche who left her with no choice but to steal to make ends meet.
Wait, what's that about irresponsible douches? Didn't Ike just vanish over his own inability to handle something, leaving a family behind? We now have a strong motive to get them isolated, talking, and involved. But just in case it's not enough -- it would help to have Heather be a touch sympathetic toward Ike instead of completely pissed off, after all -- I suggest that Heather should have been around Soren at around the time he got himself killed.
Even so, isn't chasing a guy off the continent just to beat him over the head for abandonment and sympathize with him over his dead friend a little extreme? Hold that thought. Take a look at that epilogue! "Heather returned home to care for her mother, swearing off her roguish ways. Yet somehow, she always had money." The implication here is obviously that she's continuing her thievery. But what if we spun this a different way -- that her experiences through this story legitimately lead to the end of her thievery (an arrangement she is not morally comfortable with) and a mysterious source of money?
So, hey, what was that Ike said about being hired as a General? "No offense, Apostle, but you didn't give me much of a choice in the first place. Besides, if I'm not fully committed, how can I expect these troops to be? Just remember: when this is all over, you'll be getting one heck of a bill." (RD 3-11)
Did he ever collect that? I mean, you could just leave that in the care of Mist, but this is Begnion politics we're talking about. Why shrug and leave it with his family when you can use it as an excuse to get him back in the country as one hell of a presence in negotiations? (Begnion, unlike Crimea, has not already experienced Ike-the-Lord-flouncing. Maybe they're hopeful. Or maybe they just have sharper talons.) Now, everyone is pretty busy post-war and in addition some talented trackers might morally disagree with this, or be playing for a different team. Heather, on the other hand, is rather personally invested in the reasons for Ike's departure, and hey, it's a job that pays excellently (out of Ike's paycheck -- call it a courier fee).
So now that we've got motives/backstory all laid out, here's what I envision the frame of the plot to be:
- Heather volunteers (... with pay) to track down Ike and drag him home for Begnion.
- Heather finds Ike with war-honed tracking/espionage skills.
- They chat, argue, bond, etc. This would be the meat of the story and the legitimately Ike/Heather part.
The ending would depend on whether we're shooting for a sexual or romantic pairing, but I'd bow to canon and have Heather ultimately return to her mother. That doesn't mean her experiences with Ike haven't changed her. In the case of a romantic pairing especially, I think there are several ways the conclusion could be handled. The most sappy outcome (albeit minorly canon-bending) would probably be Ike returning to Crimea to watch Mist get married and then hanging out around Ohma with increasing frequency as he ages. He dyes his hair and wears a scarf around his face and Begnion never figures it out because it's an infallible disguise. Or something of that nature. It depends on the details of the story, which could go a few ways.
So there you are, a believable premise and plot for a serious Ike/Heather story.
If anyone feels like
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I'm not nuts enough to take this on the way I took on Samuraiter's Marth/Norne idea, but this kind of "how to make the improbable work" does tickle my fancy.
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You know, I think I may actually try this the next time I feel like starting something new. Head explosions be damned. :D
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Ahahaha really? I look forward to it!
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A mutually-satisfactory parting seems like the best way to end this, though. I guess that undercuts a romantic interpretation.
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It really comes down to what a "ship" is supposed to be.