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i'm sorry for this

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Marianne piece made for the Marianne Fanzine back in 2020/2021

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witty caption 

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smile!

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You know, when you consider Azure Moon as a self-contained narrative, the use of ‘unanswered questions’ and ambiguity as a reinforcement of the themes of the route are really effective. I honestly think having the route not address the Slithers was the best narrative choice IntSys could possibly have made given the themes of Azure Moon.

Like. The developers didn’t really expect people to actually play all the routes; they designed the game so ‘everyone would have a different experience.’ As a result, all the routes have very different themes and scopes. Azure Moon is the tightest, most character-driven narrative despite not being the shortest route.

And Azure Moon is about grief.

Grief hangs over the entire route; except for Mercedes, every single one of the Blue Lions is haunted by the Tragedy of Duscur and the unanswered questions surrounding it. Felix loses his brother directly, and his worldview and best friend to the aftermath. Ingrid loses her fiance, but also her sense of security; without Glenn, her people may starve, and her personal future is now uncertain. Sylvain and Glenn were the same age, so we can assume they were friends, though his loss is less direct; Sylvain is surrounded by people broken by loss, including his own father. Annette’s father leaves her family in disgrace over being unable to stop the tragedy. Ashe loses his foster brother to the aftermath; and later his foster father as well. 

Dimitri and Dedue lose everything.

All of them spend the whole route wanting to find answers and some kind of closure for this event. It drives the entire narrative for all of the Lions actually from Faerghus. Mercedes, meanwhile, stands as an outside observer to that tragedy - but she is also dealing with her own personal tragedy and unanswered questions about her brother, and that drives her during Azure Moon.

And the thing about grief is that sometimes you never get closure. But you still have to move on, anyway.

That’s the whole point of Azure Moon. Dimitri has to move on. All the Lions have to move on. 

Mercedes cannot regain her brother, whether you find out his identity or not in the route. She has to move on anyway. Dimitri cannot reconcile with his family, not with Rufus (Did Dimitri kill him? We the viewer can never really know for sure) and not with Edelgard. He never finds out whether Patricia wanted to kill his father, or whether she loved Dimitri at all (and we the viewer don’t, either). He has to move on anyway. The Lions never find out the cause of the tragedy.

They have to move on anyway.

Involving the Slithers at that point would not only add a bunch of last-minute narrative complications that aren’t necessary in Azure Moon, it would undermine the emotional impact of the route (in much the same way the last map of Verdant Wind does, honestly). The themes of Azure Moon not only don’t need to answer the question of the Slithers; not answering that question is the point. Bringing up the Slithers at that point would take all the air out of the personal drama the route takes its entire runtime addressing.

Dimitri hesitates at the end. He stops, and tries to look back, and Byleth stops him. He has to move on. He can’t keep looking back at Duscur. He’s got to walk forward. 

And that means leaving his questions unanswered. 

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The Church of Seiros as Cards Against Humanity (sfw)

Black Eagles | Blue Lions | Golden Deer | Ashen Wolves | Church of Seiros | TWSITD

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The Ashen Wolves as Cards Against Humanity (sfw)

Black Eagles | Blue Lions | Golden Deer | Ashen Wolves | Church of Seiros | TWSITD

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The Black Eagles as Cards Against Humanity (sfw)

Black Eagles | Blue Lions | Golden Deer | Ashen Wolves | Church of Seiros | TWSITD

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House of Blaiddyd, Crest of Flames

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bluebird

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"Rumors have spoken about a beast wandering the Woods of Edmund."

My take on Marianne turning into a monster

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i dunno how well to articulate this, but i wanna ramble about Marianne for a sec, specifically about her "curse"

no matter how much you try to ignore all the bad and incorrect shit people who don't know you but don't like you say about you, eventually you start to believe that maybe they're right for saying whatever they say. it starts to eat away at your very mind and you start to spiral and end up horribly undervaluing yourself. these people belittle you for things they don't find acceptable and eventually, despite how much you don't want to, you start to believe you're unacceptable. most often it's something you were born with, something you can't just change or ignore, and something that isn't your fault in the slightest, but eventually you believe it's always been your fault. it can all make you feel inhuman, worthless.

Marianne being born with the Crest of the Beast, even if it's a minor Crest, made her a target for shitty people to spout shitty stuff at for years and years, and she had to endure being called vile and dehumanising insults, and eventually, she started to believe them. her supports being about her finding people who love her with her supposed flaw of having the Crest of the Beast and helping her love herself and feel human as well as proving she isn't a burden just hit really, really close to home, as someone who was bullied for years on end.

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I don’t why but I felt like this meme fit them

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reread Claude and Marianne's supports and i'm 😭😭😭 Claude is so fucking sweet man

I KNOOOOOOWWWWW 😭😭 it's such good character development too because he honestly starts off being!! kind of an ass!! like their c-support is basically claude being like 'so whats your painful deep dark secret :)' and marianne's like 'trauma :( ' and claude's like 'haha :) but no rly tho'

he's at least aware that he messed up by their b-support; he's still not really communicating on a level that actually helps marianne, but he does understand that he was being hurtful. he shows growth already; in the c-support when she leaves he remarks that now he's just even more curious about what she's hiding, while in the b-support when she leaves he shows real concern for the impact on her wellbeing.

and then their a-support! it's so interesting because rather than in the dining hall where their other supports are set (which is also—likely unintentionally—interesting considering claude's repeated association with feasts), he goes to find her out in the stables, a place where she feels at home. and instead of asking for a third time what her problem is, he finally lets down his own walls and opens up to her, as a friend—admittedly, as a wink-and-nudge, but in a way that i think marianne understands is a wink-and-nudge. and crucially by the end...he still doesn't know what her secret is, but he lets it go because he realizes he doesn't need to know. he just needs to know that his friend is upset and hurting over something, and that as her friend he should help her, which is what breaking down walls between people is really about. it's such a neat personal journey for claude as a character!

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An Arrow Piercing the Heart’s Eye - Chapter Seven

The shadows loom deep and thick over the forest of Mircea, heavy with history and dark with blood. On their way home after claiming the Great Bridge of Myrddin, Marianne and Linhardt are separated from the rest of the convoy during a raid and become lost in Mircea. But even with Maurice gone, something still waits in the dark heart of the forest…

Chapter Seven is up!

And there was another one which, once she opened the door, she had little choice but to stare inside, mesmerized in a way she couldn’t really explain. This room, its floor was bare of anything, but its walls were lined liberally with portraits set in fine gold frames. Once upon a time, the portraits must have been rich and fair to look upon indeed, but no longer.

At some point, some person had come along and ripped the faces of the portraits’ subjects out of the canvas. Those scraps of canvas were nowhere to be seen now, leaving Marianne no change to put faces to any of these portraits. As she peered at them more closely, though never creeping over the threshold, a malaise of unease settled deeply over her again. The clothing worn by the subjects, men and women and children, bore no resemblance to anyone whom Marianne had ever seen. The styles, too, were largely unfamiliar, though there were a couple that were a little more familiar to her. There was no reason for her to suppose that these portraits were of anyone she had ever known, but all the same, once she had pored over all in their turn, she was happy to shut the door and leave this room behind her.

 How many others have been lost here?