Background material for Ace

[acehoneycomb]

I noticed that of the three boys, Ace is the least developed or even speculated about. We saw Teddy's background quite a lot and we at least got to see Lancer's mansion. Ace, on the other hand, has virtually no background material to work with other than being "Prince Charming' and athletic. So, any speculations about Ace's life?

[Notes]

Truthfully, I'm not the one to ask. I'd jump on the bandwagon with Kat on the perfectionist/competitive parents idea. It fits, yanno? 'Even at the cost of being nice, come out on the top.' Sounds accurate to me.

[Kat]

Ah, speculation about Ace - my favourite topic! ♥

Likes Notes said - I totally see him having parents who expect perfection at all costs. I kind of flip between different types of parents for him based on what I want to do with him in a particular arc or how I want to write him. But he always has parents who instil in him the need to be the best from a young age.

However there is one big huge hint in the comics that I like to use to support some theories I have about him!

In one of the issues it's Ace birthday (sadly there is no full comic about it, it's just an activity panel, and then Bon Bon mentions it in her diary entry) and there is zero mention of any parents (nor are they drawn in the background). Plus - it states that the party decorations were made by Sweetheart, and Bon Bon made his birthday cake. Hence my belief that his parents aren't really there for him much - because why on earth would they let two nine/ten year olds plan their kid's birthday party and make his cake? Kinda sketchy from a parental standpoint!

Plus I also love to discuss the end of Stand By Me - and his reasoning for being a sulky brat at the end when Starlight scores the winning goal. I've always been of the opinion that even though they expect him to be perfect at sports, they don't actually go to his games (I even thought that back when the show first aired when I was 11!). So he wants to be the one who wins the games all the time so everyone on his team (plus his coach and everyone else's parents) all congratulate him and basically give him the attention his parents don't give him. So when someone else (Starlight in this case) ends up being the saviour and everyone congratulates her, he gets bratty because she's stolen his spotlight, and now no one is going to praise him for the work he did do. It's not until later, after he's had time to get over his disappointment at being overshadowed, that he realizes he's been a jerk. I think that's one thing people overlook about him - he definitely can be a jerk - but he doesn't need anyone to tell him he was being a jerk, he comes to that realization himself. He swallows his pride and apologizes to her for his behaviour. I also love that he's able to put his issues aside and actually see that she does have potential to be a good player, and he wants to encourage that. I love the potential for him to really develop as a leader - he shows it half the time (he's much better at this in the comics). There's that perfectionist attitude about him, but he also realizes that it won't matter how good he is if his team sucks. So over the years he'll have to combat his inner perfectionist brat and learn to put the needs of his teammates ahead of his own.

He's definitely an only child, though I have played around with him having siblings (I've even given him a twin at one point; I've honestly done next to everything with this kid story-wise, haha).

I am dying to hear other people's take on him though! So hopefully I'm not the only one talking about him (though I will gladly write a novel about him if given the opportunity).

[Notes]

Kat, you beat me to coming up with an original Ace story by, what, ten years? I mine as well just ask you what his favorite color is! Is that consistent? Or does it change by the backstory?! l80

Honestly though, how do you come up with all of this juicy stuff? Is that what being a fan of Ace for 22 years incites? I'm between three and 44ths there. If I didn't know better, I'd say that the next story would have him as the secret Batman, who is athletic, cunning, morally ambiguous to others, and a genius. l8,

[Kat]

His favourite colour is green obviously - because he's got green eyes the shade of grass (as a soccer player this makes him happy). In certain arcs of mine (where he has a mother he's really close to, and a father he's not so close to) he looks like his dad but he's got his mother's eyes, so that makes him like the colour green even more.

As for how I come up with everything - obsession, really. *lol* I've had a lot of muses in my head over the years from different fandoms, and Ace is the only one who's shown up in pretty much all of them (sometimes by name, other times simply by inspiring a character). My biggest fandom after Tales was actually professional wrestling (back in the late 90s, it was my first on-line fandom!) - and in all of my planning for stuff involving the wrestlers (I had an "awesome" arc where they all went to high school together, haha) they always had a non-wrestler friend called Ace that they hung out with! He just wouldn't let me do anything without him being involved.

I've never had him as a superhero (probably because I'm not really into superhero stuff) but the closest thing I have is putting him into the world of Skyrim (my favourite video game). Actually that and my Animorphs cross-over are my closest things to him being the saviour of the world. I've also recently put him into a version of the Hunger Games (although there he's Katniss' younger brother and kind of steals Peeta's role in the third book)! And I've also plotted out my own version of Battle Royale with all the Tales kids, and he of course features prominently in that. I pretty much stick him into any story I love, to be honest. I've even written a story where he and Teddy break the law and get sent to juvenile prison! Really, my ability to put Ace into different stories is beyond ridiculous at this point.

I probably have about 20 different ideas for him (all with slightly varying versions of himself) that I keep track of... It's at the point where even my boyfriend refers to pretty blond guys as "Aces" (since I usually write the Tales kids as humans these days), haha!

[Notes]

I knew there was a reason I associated you with green somewhat... And I see that even the reasons for his liking green are different. But coolio! I think the story you wrote about Patria mentioned it. Clever, though.

Obsession is it? So, if I continue my obsession, great ideas will fall into my lap? Awesome! Though I haven't been involved with fandom for long, I still never really thought of my favorite characters in every single other fandom I like. A story in which big sweaty guys who wrestle a lot go to high school?! Pfft! That's seriously cool that Ace is ever-present. I've had a great many favorite characters over the years, but I've never been that invested in one. Sounds like Ace to want to be in everything.

I'm not particularly into superheroes, but Batman is my favorite. That's thanks to an episode in a My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic spinoff on an abrdiged series, Rainbow Dash Presents. One episode had their ditsy version of Rainbow Dash landing in a world of monkeys and being taken care of by the Bat who Lived and eventually dating the Jokermort.

I've always been depressed about writing stories where... well, anyone dies. Hunger Games and Battle Royale based stories would be impossible for me to write for, especially if all of the characters ended up dying... )8'0

But if Ace was in the Hunger Games books, theoretically, what is it that he'd do? And who would be the Katniss or the Gale or the bread to his Peeta?

I'm fascinated with that juvenile prison. I did some research because, someday, someone will get stuck in there... maybe Patch will finally get caught for trespassing on others' property...

Your ability to imagine Ace in so many situations is ridiculous... ridiculously cool!

I know you write the Tales kids as humans. It's odd because, no matter how hard I try, I can never think of them as looking different than in the show! If you have a story in which Teddy gets a second divorce, Clover gets caught by the cops while speeding five miles over the speed limit in her fancypants limo, and Patch gets captured by the Evil Ponies of Evil Ponyland while spying, they're still ten-year-old kids.

Hilarity on the Aces point.

[acehoneycomb]

Kat, you gave Ace a twin brother once? Oh my...
Looks like there's a lot of interesting ideas about Ace's background around here so far.

[Kat]

Yes, actually I believe it was my best friend who started the whole Ace having a twin thing (Crescentium, who wrote December Romeo in case you're familiar; she and I share many Ace-centric storylines). She created his twin Ice (they're identical twins with the exception of having differently coloured eyes - green for Ace, blue for Ice), who plays hockey. I basically appropriated him, haha, and have actually used him in a few different storylines! Basically every time their parents favour Ice (we set them in Sweden, where hockey's more popular than soccer), but the twins themselves are super close. Ice is probably my favourite of my imagined siblings for Ace, to be honest! Actually she and I even did an AU using the twins and Melody (and the other Tales kids, but none of them featured as much as these three) where they were all musicians and were competing in a reality TV music competition (that we styled after the Eurovision song contest). I've since done a few other things using Ice, it's really fun to figure out Ace's proper dynamic with a twin brother.

[Notes]

Yes indeed, acehoneycomb, yes indeed.

Ohmahgosh Ice! For some reason I always imagine him as Buddy. I mean, he played hockey on the show, and Ice sounds like a blue and white pony to me. I'd ask for a link to the story you worked on together, considering both of y'all are great Tales writers, but... heh...

[Kat]

He definitely would look like Buddy in colouring if I didn't want them to be identical! But I have a weakness for identical twins, so they had to look alike.

As for the stuff - if you're bored you can check some of it out here. Some of it is locked to only LJ friends, but some of it was left public. There are a few short little stories there, and a few weeks of performance recaps. Also - we actually gave the twins their Swedish names (Ace is Ess, and Ice is Isse) just so you know who is who. I had intended to do the entire full show (I do have "results" from each week of competition) but sadly she and I moved on to other things. I do kind of miss it now though, so I may go and update it anyway for fun. But yeah, aside from them Melody was there representing Germany; Bon Bon, Teddy, and Corny were a metal band from Portugal; Lancer was a singer from Finland; Sweetheart was from Switzerland; and we also put Starlight and an OC as a pair from Poland.

[Notes]

I'm aware that Ace and Ice are identical twins, but I visualize him like that anyway.With the younger sisters of Teddy, I always picture them like Princess Rosy with her blue-dyed hair. Partially because the first one I read about was Rose, and I was all "Teddy's a prince... waaaaat." But my visualizing things is incredibly strange, and sometimes contrary to what the author is trying to say.

*0* Coolio!

It's funny, because I just watched an episode of Hetalia. It personifies all the stereotypes from all the countries. But WHY, great tell, would Bon Bon join a rock band with TEDDY, or be part of one at all? And why CORNY? Teddy isn't too close with his cousin... and metal...?

[Kat]

To be honest - it just sort of happened as we were watching the Eurovision contest that year. She and I had already been writing the Tales kids as humans for a few years at that point, and we liked to find inspiration for them in pretty much anything we were doing (even if it meant changing personalities and histories). It all started with Ireland's entry - twin blond guys - Jedward. As soon as we saw them we started drawing parallels with our twin boys (I can't really picture Ace doing anything this dorky, but their parents ran their careers, and Ice was much better at convincing his brother to do what his mother wanted) and from there we just kept seeing influence for other kids in other competitors.

Melody came into the picture through Getter Jaani of Estonia (she could totally pass for my human version of Melody)
Starlight (and our OC) were influenced by Ell/Nikki of Azerbaijan (she doesn't look like my Starlight except for the blonde hair; but it was a cute song with a blonde and it worked for what we were doing elsewhere with Starlight and the OC we had; his name is Sherlock - I think he was Ace's cousin. Actually now that I think about it - originally we were going to have Starlight alone, influenced by Mika Newton of Ukraine; but then we saw the pair from Azerbaijan and decided to include Sherlock; though Mika is much closer to what I picture human!Starlight looking like)
Lancer came from Paradise Oskar of Finland (it was really just perfect for Lancer we thought)
Sweetheart came from Anna Rossinelli of Switzerland (we both thought the performance was a little too sweet and cute for our liking, but that it matched our feelings about Sweetheart)
Teddy and Bon Bon came in through Eldrine of Portugal (she kind of looks like a human BB for me, and there's a dude with a mohawk for Teddy; at this point in the contest we had already worked in a few other kids, so we were actively looking for more of the characters in the performers left)

Sadly no one really matched our visions of Brighteyes, Clover, or Patch. But then we just decided to forge ahead with the kids we did find in the show (but we created different stories for them, as is the case with Bon Bon). We decided to throw Corny in for fun.

So yeah, no one really matches their canon persona, but this is a total AU so it didn't really matter to us. Half of our focus was on OCs anyway, the other kids were just there to flesh out the competition.

[Notes]

Ah; very cool. I find the urges to connect EVERYTHING to Tales, or at the very least, if I see a character being sweet and standing up for what they believe in, I'll remark, "Hey, that dame/gentleman reminds me of Sweetheart!" Nice explanation for Ace and Ice, too. Considering blonde guys seem to remind you of Ace, I should have suspected that was something of an origin point for this fine work.

You visualize them as complete humans, huh...? The closest I could ever get in ANYTHING is probably more realistically-proportioned Equestria Girls, where they maintain their pony skin color and hair color, with their symbol incorporated in there somewhere. And I always picture them as adorable little ponies, no matter what, haha. But I guess I see where you're coming from with most of these fine dames and gentlemen.

I do have to wonder what your visions for them would be like. For curiosity's sake, at least. But wow, that must have taken some fundamental backstory changing for her to get into heavy metal, hard rock, or any aggressive music. I've heard of anti-stereotypes, but we're talking about the same little pony who, in the words of bobdude, "ran away because she thought her friends wouldn't like her outfit." Deeper then that to me, because I actually have a backstory for her, but I digress. This is Ace's thread, after all!

But that's really truly awesome that you included Corny. He gets shunted to the side, the sweet guy.

Okey dokey. It would have been silly if you tried to imply that was the case; the kids all met on Eurovision for the first time... BAH! BP

[bobdude]

You know, Kat's idea of the Tales ponies as humans has now got me thinking of Ace as baring more then a passing resemblance to this cheery fellow. www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRtaRbj7FWI Given that both the English Dub version of Light and Ace share the same VA...

[Notes]

Wow, I suppose you're right, in a passive way. Like how a black haired guy looks like another black haired guy. I've heard about Mr. Light before, especially in YouTube comments, too.

Of course, Ace isn't insane.