#MAYBE as a player looking in you can find good in Edelgard but the characters themselves? most don't have that knowledge

[butwhatifidothis]

You know, as shallow and cheesy as Awakening's writing can get at times, the way it handles Mustafa vs 3H's handling of Edelgard are kind of interesting when compared.

Mustafa is someome that we as players know for exactly one, singular chapter. He is a commander of a troops of soldiers, and he dies the same map he is introduced in. And yet, he has become one of Awakening's most beloved NPC's - if nothing else, he is certainly rarely hated outright. And that is because in his one, singular chapter, he manages to showcase to the player how much of a genuinely good person he is; he is helpless to outright defy his orders, but inspired by Emmeryn's sacrifice he nonetheless tries to plea for Chrom to surrender and avoid bloodshed. He takes their outrage not with anger, or defensiveness, but understanding and sympathy - he knows he is in no place to ask them to surrender, but he does so for the slightest chance of avoiding a fight ultimately he had no power to stop. And after the battle begins and his men start becoming despondent, he loudly tells them that should they want to flee the battle he will take any blame off of their shoulders for doing so. But his men stand by him regardless because they don't want to abandon him, and when Mustafa is killed his dying words are to please spare his men.

In just one chapter, Awakening managed to pull at the players' hearts by going out of its way to show us the kind heart of Mustafa, before forcing our hand in killing him, all while one of the most melancholic tracks of the game plays in the background, further cementing how tragic the situation at hand is for all involved. Most players recall it as one of the most impactful and emotional moments of the entire game.

In contrast to that - and let's assume that we're talking about strictly SS - you have half of the entire route's length having Edelgard by your side directly. As Byleth, you the player can directly speak to and support with her, and you see her perspective on the events of the story. And throughout this time, Edelgard shows herself again and again to be someone of poor character; she admits to being willing to sacrifice her men right after Lonato, Byleth eventually finds out that she helped kidnap Flayn, and that she was somehow complicit with Remire, she graverobbed a holy site and tried to kill Byleth and her "friends" with an army and Demonic Beasts.

And this only includes stuff that Byleth, as a character, finds out throughout the story. They don't know that Edelgard only let them talk with her (aka the player only gains her supports) once they gain the Sword of the Creator, for the explicit reason that she wanted to use them. They don't know that Edelgard didn't just waltz in after Remire randomly, but that she knew it was going to happen and did nothing to stop it. And this only includes stuff in pre-timeskip; they don't see her continue to use Demonic Beasts, or hide behind her citizens, or keep Rhea as a hostage so that she can keep using TWS's help.

And I look at these two characters and am kinda lowkey astonished at how different their writing is. When Mustafa's men grow angry at the soldiers who are shaking in their resolve to fight for Mustafa, I'm on the verge of tears because I know that Mustafa does not deserve death. When Seteth talks about how Edelgard can't be that bad of a ruler because her men follow her, I can't help but roll my eyes. When Henry mentions Mustafa off-handedly in a support chain, I get so sad because the only way to speak about Mustafa at that point is in the past tense. When I talk to characters in the explore sections and I hear them talk about feeling bad about Edelgard dying, I just mash through their babbling.

Because I am given ample reason to understand why characters would like, respect, and mourn for Mustafa. He is kind-hearted, self-sacrificial should it possibly save the lives of others, and does everything he can to make the lives of those around him better. In the collective fuckin' 10 minutes of screentime he has, he shows a quality of character that does nothing but suggest that he was a damn fine person thrown into an impossibly unfortunate circumstance.

But with Edelgard, everything I see of her only tells me that she is selfish, self-centered, and uncaring for the lives around her should they inconvenience her. Why would any character like, respect, or mourn for her, after seeing everything she's done? Even going under the assumption that the players gets all of her supports to the max as they are available in pre-timeskip; nothing, in any support chain, could ever dream of usurping her actions towards everyone. In both a "all of her friends" sense, and especially in a "all of Fodlan" sense. So when I see characters go out of their way to make sure the player knows how swell Edelgard is, I am simply unable to believe that anyone would ever genuinely believe that about her. Not when themselves, their loved ones, and their homelands (for Kingdom/Alliance students) are all being endangered by Edelgard's active, willful actions that she chose to make.

Which itself is another huge thing that makes it so hard to believe anyone in-game would believe in her outside of contrived writing. She's not someone forced to do what she does against all of her wishes, like Mustafa; she is the one with all of the power of 1/3 of Fodlan's political landscape and half of its territorial one. She is the one to spearhead and instigate the war - that is one of explicit conquest anyway, not for any altruistic purpose. Why would anyone cry and snivel and piss themselves over the fact that the person who had the power to make them suffer and did make them suffer lost? Why are they pretending that she's just some poor damsel whose path was so lonely, and not the conquering Emperor that she is and admits to being?

Soooo... yeah lmao. I just found that pretty interesting

#anti edelgard #anti-edelgard #edelgard critical #edelgard discourse #just to be safe #like. I can SEE why Mustafa's men are willing to fight an unwinnable battle for him. why they would die for him #i have NO clue why the hell Ladislava is so loyal to Edelgard - why anyone other than Hubert would ever be GENUINELY loyal to her #MAYBE as a player looking in you can find good in Edelgard but the characters themselves? most don't have that knowledge #and so all most of them have going for them is ''girly who lied to them about colluding with terrorists for a year & tried to murder them'' #and THEN they'd have ''girly who violently invaded my homeland with terrorists and mutated humans'' once the war starts #which y'know call me crazy but i don't think She Was Nice To Me Once In High School is enough to offset that image painted by her actions

[raxistaicho]

Edelgard suggested she might be wrong, though!

Eeeyyy, Strikes (that’s her nickname and it’s a lot shorter than butwhatifidothis, sorry) doesn’t usually make arguments anymore! This’ll be a nice break from Fantasy Invader.

Maybe.

Hopefully.

Spoilers for Trails in the Sky a ways under the cut

And uhh, that’s not an argument I’ve ever heard before, honestly, it must be a super old one. Good thing it got dropped, it’s weak.

So because Edelgard said,

It means the devs are saying, “you did wrong, tho.”

So I guess when Dimitri says he’s a monster who deserves death it means we need to ram him into something that can kill him, accept the game over, and start a new file of Three Houses?

When Joshua Bright said he was a broken person with a broken heart, it meant Estelle should have immediately given up on him?

When Velvet Crowe said she was monster and claimed she ate Seres just ‘cause, that meant she retconned reality and changed the circumstances under which she ate her?

It’s almost like sometimes people with trauma and a poor self-image say self-deprecating things that aren’t actually true.

“Which doesn’t mean Byleth is defying destiny by walking at Edelgard’s side. No sir.”

Again, the devs only said Silver Snow was the route that was made first to explore the world, not that the worldbuilding suits SS specifically. Otherwise, what the fuck is Azure Moon there for? I’ve seen it argued that White Clouds best suits Azure Moon because of Lonato and Miklan (setting aside that their respective issues were not about Dimitri’s personal tragedy but the broken state of Fodlan society), but with Strikes’ argument Azure Moon can’t possibly mesh with White Clouds because White Clouds only supports Silver Snow, according to her!

I mean... Azure Moon doesn’t mesh at all with White Clouds anyways, but that’s for very very different reasons.

I’m on to you, you red-headed, red-caped bastard.

I won’t let you invade Nohr, Ryoma >:(

Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but Byleth’s side, whichever side that is, does plenty of mowing down in all routes.

Damn, Fodlan is doomed.

Those poor celebrating commoners.

Oh no, is this Crushed Nugget again?

Now we’re delving straight into, I believe, Crushed Nugget’s Everyone is Miserable in CF set of posts, which is something I’d reeeeeaaaaaally like to dig into sometime, because it’s just a lot of petty and trivial ways to try to demonstrate everybody as being unhappy or less-fulfilled characters in CF.

These can range from the ever-popular “Lysithea doesn’t want to destroy the Empire in CF”, to “Yuri feels overworked in CF”, to “Raphael is irresponsible and happy in CF”, to “Ingrid is sadge in CF”. Yeah, being happy is bad if in CF and being unhappy is also bad if in CF.

It’s basically just her plucking at literally anything she can find to say that CF is bad in that exact moment without any regard for consistent standards. Ignatz’s is especially amazing given you know if the paintings he drew were reversed she’d instead say VW Ignatz is good for wanting to immortalize the horror of war so we never forget what war takes from us while CF Ignatz is bad for trying to cover up the pain with pretty pictures of something.

If you looked at red flags through pink lenses, wouldn’t they still look red?

Hey, you’re the one who said,

Because even the lord of the route is trying to tell the player that uhhh Byleth doesn't belong here, they're supposed to be on the other routes. Which checks with how the devs said that SS is the route the world-building is based on, and how within the game itself CF directly goes against SS' world-building. 

Don’t blame me for arguments you made!

She’s missing the point. It’s not argued that you don’t get to choose SS. The argument is that you do have to choose CF. You can’t default onto CF the way you can SS.

Another important point is how riddled with But Thou Musts SS is.

Who’s in charge of the army here, Seteth!?

So... going CF isn’t about tearing Byleth away from their proper place in SS?

If Byleth is meant to go SS, as Strikes said above, then CF is about defying fate.

If CF isn’t about defying fate, then Byleth isn’t meant to go SS.

So suddenly Byleth is more than a self-insert for the player to glom onto? That’s a bit contradictory to the usual Edelcrit line, but okay.

Since Byleth is now their own character and not a self-insert to represent the player, then Edelgard isn’t trying to date the player and the player demographics have no bearing on whether or not she’s bi, nor does her "gap moe” have any bearing on whether or not CF is a valid choice, because maybe Byleth doesn’t care about all that. Maybe they’re into MILFs.

Technically no, there’s a sequence of options that can have Byleth making no positive choice regarding which side to take.

Miss the coronation entirely, then you have a “I must kill Edelgard,” and “...” option at the Holy Tomb.

Indeed, you can spend basically all of SS being dragged around expressing discontent, and getting But Thou Must’ed into following along with the plot.

Also, again, the argument is not that Byleth can’t choose SS. It’s that they have to choose CF.

Hey, speak for yourself, I usually marry Dorothea.

Strikes is getting real fuckin’ philosophical all of a sudden about the concept of player character agency in a narrative-driven video game.

For real, this is some Bioshock/Undertale-level shit.

You know, I never considered that maybe Corvo would rather just stay in his cell and accept execution as penance for his failure to protect the Empress. He can’t speak in Dishonored 1, how do I know what his thoughts on the subject are? Am I puppetting him to commit mass murder like some kind of revenge-loving cordyceps!?

I am so sorry, Corvo :(

But actually, Strikes, how do you know that Byleth wants to fight Edelgard? Maybe they want to pick Black Eagles every time? Are you perhaps denying their agency every time you join your beloved Golden Deer? (I’m just assuming GD is her favorite route since she professes to love Claude). Are you denying their agency when you click on, “I must kill Edelgard”?

How could you do such an awful thing?

Bonus round time!

Why is she continuing her arguments in the tags??? That sounds annoying as hell.

Also, uhh,

Look at that fucking smug grin. Is that the face of an expressionless killing machine?

I have no idea where this, “Byleth reverts to being the Ashen Demon in CF” argument came from. I guess because they’re killing people the Edelgard detractors would rather they not kill, they have to be doing it heartlessly? That’s assuming a lot.

That’s... more or less exactly what it is, actually.

I know Strikes doesn’t like Edelgard being portrayed as a sad, tragic figure, but uhh... she is. Edge of Dawn is right there, it’s about Edelgard’s sorrow thinking about the future.

#Fire Emblem Three Houses #Edelgard von Hresvelg #edelgard discourse #edelgard positive #strikes #butwhatifidothis #Another thing Edelcrits don't really consider is that maybe Byleth doesn't want to rule Fodlan? Like they get upset about Byleth not getting #to rule the land in CF but maybe they want that. You can't know they don't #don't try to make decisions for them #it's mean.

[dmclemblems]

Just wanted to tell you that I really love your recent post about Rhea. It always baffles me that people don't see how similar she is to the three lords and how each of them reflects parts of Rhea, her personality and history. She is a very complex, but - IMO - criminally underutilized character. I would've love to see more of her in Three Hopes, in this different timeline "without" Byleth and all the drama, especially in AG as ally. Really a wasted opportunity.

Thank you!! I agree, Rhea isn't utilized as much as she could and should be. Even in Hopes, they could've used her as part of the story without Byleth. When the game came out, that's actually what I was hoping for. I wanted to see more of what the Church would look like without Byleth around and without Rhea being able to truly plan to pass on her role to Byleth.

Also, the fact that you can kill Byleth (and Jeralt) in Hopes and you don't get any scene with Rhea about it is such a wasted plotline. You can literally kill the person who is the vessel for Rhea's mother that she's been trying to revive all this time, effectively killing Sothis, and Rhea just... apparently never finds out.

Jeralt's Mercenaries in this game are also a common topic, so it's not like she just wouldn't know they're out and about. Jeralt says he wants to steer clear of Rhea, but I'm sure word of him has reached her at the very least. If you're playing SB, Jeralt is hired by Faerghus initially and for quite some time. It's not like in AG where they join near the end of the game and Dimitri promises to help Jeralt keep a low profile. Since she also doesn't mention him/Byleth in AG at camp, I imagine he successfully kept them out of Rhea's notice. Even then though, she should be aware that they were hired by the enemy, no? Ofc, even if not, it's still a wasted plotline that she just doesn't know.

Seriously, it should've been some kind of plot where if you killed Byleth and Jeralt that you had to fight Rhea and she tried to get revenge for them. Jeralt she had a personal friendship with and has known him for such a long time. Byleth she doesn't know personally but she does know that's the vessel of her mother and Jeralt and Sitri's child. You choosing to kill them in any route should definitely have consequences.

In SB and GW it makes sense that Rhea would become your enemy since she's your enemy regardless, but I'd love an extra battle with her or something. Maybe Edelgard or Claude, depending on the route, learns about what happened to the Nabateans because she tells them in a part of the story only accessible if you killed Byleth. In AG, maybe it causes tension between the armies and the KoS won't help you anymore, or maybe for a little while while Seteth tries to reason with Rhea. Since in Houses Seteth makes it clear to the player that he wasn't privy to the whole Byleth-Sitri-Sothis situation, he wouldn't be as connected emotionally to Byleth and Jeralt dying. He's also skeptical of Jeralt at first in Houses because of him having run away in the past. I feel like he'd talk to Rhea, who is angry at the Kingdom army for killing them, and reason with her about why it happened and that they're not to blame for whatever she's upset about (and even if she told Seteth the whole truth, I think he'd still explain to her that it's not their fault and they couldn't have known any of that).

Plus, seeing tension with Faerghus and the Church would've been a great story to stick in there. We only ever see them on the same side and always on good terms. Sometimes Shit Happens and people don't agree. We never get to see tension between them. The only thing even remotely close to "tension" is when Seteth tells Gilbert they can't spare any troops for the Kingdom to fight with in Silver Snow. Even then, it was all very respectful and they had permission to pass.

Also, in Hopes Seteth and Dimitri are closer to being friends since they got more time together and you get more of their opinion on each other (for Dimitri about Seteth it's not directly from him, but Shez mentions it in camp and we hear from Seteth directly about his own opinion). I would love to see a situation in AG where Seteth refuses to abandon the Kingdom after the Church was given shelter and safety. Rhea might not want to help them because of Byleth being killed, but Seteth and Flayn would remain, and any knights very loyal to them who also agree that the Kingdom has done a whole lot for them could also stick around.

I think it would give Rhea a lot to reflect on to have tension between her and Seteth too! Like... she's a character and an important one! Why are there characters less important than her in Houses who are more important than her in Hopes who have more development than she gets in both games combined? She needs conflicts and resolutions, not to be just a flat out enemy or a flat out ally. Even irl, when you have a close friend, sometimes you argue or fight. In Houses, Seteth had some moments where he was suspicious of Rhea but he chose to ultimately believe in her because he knows she's isn't a bad person doing things with malicious intent. She did a bad thing, but it was out of desperation and heartbreak. It was similar to how Dimitri basically lost his mind in Houses. She's been down that road too.

It's just such a shame that there's so much they could do with her and they just... never did. She should've been playable at some point in AG too. There was room in every route to make her more important, and GW also has nothing to do with Rhea overall. You see her like... maybe one or two times tops before the final chapter??? It's just... really lame. How can you make her the final boss of GW but have hardly even shown her throughout the story? It completely banks on your knowledge of Houses and even then doesn't work because Hopes' story is completely different. Claude never seemed to have an opinion one way or another on the Church in Hopes, and he didn't spend enough time at the Academy in Hopes to start having suspicions about Rhea. If they wanted him to have that, I feel like she needed to be a frequent part of the story.

The sad truth is that Heroes is doing Rhea more justice than both games combined ever did. Yikes!

#DCE Ask

[randomnameless]

I've read somewhere AM fans criticise the plot and the writing the most, when CF fans just go along with the plot.

God, does it make me a AM fan, when the majority of what I post when I post about FE16 (lizards) aren't even present in AM??

Let's say I'm just a FE fan.

And Three Houses... is special.

From the theme song and the red herrings and the framing and all the mumbo jumbo - it's painfully obvious the lynchpin of the game was "what if you knew the red Emperor in their youth but you still have to fight them?".

The plot was built around this lynchpin, thus making SS the first route, the route where, effectively, you end up killing the Red Emperor, even if you created a bond with her.

But, I've made several metaphors about it, this plot... doesn't interest me in the slightest.

Maybe because I'm too old, or I played too many JRPGS, but my answer has always been "whatever the goal the means still matter", so the second Baldo and Waldi were shown, I couldn't have the "sad feels (tm)" of fighting against someone I previously trained.

What I am really interested in is the world built to support the lynchpin, to provide some meat to your "most important choice".

Aliens, dragons, gore, mole people, technology, other countries attacking a continent, etc etc.

And so, by nerding about those "other things" that I am not supposed to care, I completely abandoned the "sad feels (tm)" and I'm left with... a world that more or less makes sense, unless the plot calls for it (it'd be nice if Solon and Kronya's remains were taken to the Church to see what Solon truly is, or if they were just captured, or anything - but Billy needs their vengeance, so even if this plot point was raised, it is quickly forgotten).

I say more or less, because if a plot point can be detrimental to the "most important choice" or has no consequences on this choice, then it is either sidelined or, not even raised.

Or worst, it is raised, but then dropped.

Back to the critics of the plot...

It is a good ludo-narrative example, CF's most ardent fans do not care about the plot and the Truth about Fodlan, because the route itself is all about ignorance.

It "works" so why question it? Why Billy's crest stone poofs away? Why Uncle and pals hate lizards? Why Edel hate lizards? Why is Sothis asleep? Why Nemesis partied?

We're left with half (even quarter) answers and... we don't care about it. Why? Because the meat surrounding the "choice!" seems appetizing enough, so it works.

But if you don't care about it? Well, you see the holes, and wonder WTF.

A SS fan could also find the plot bearable enough - but SS more or less focuses on the lizards - rather less than more - and the mole people, so they have to look beyond the juicy bits around the "most important choice" and come to the conclusion there is... nothing. Why Rhea becomes berserk? We don't know.

Still, if the tastiest meat isn't around the bone... why would you even care about it?

If the FE16 devs paid too much attention the their world, their characters and their lore... why would you, player, have "sad feels (tm)" about siding with Edelgard or not when you have a conflict between a benevolent (?) alien creature and genocidal mole people with nuclear missiles, with people caught in the middle (humans from Fodlan, but also, current Nabateans) ?

Every CF fan who argues they should have had a map where they raid Shambala already finished the meat around the lynchpin and start to look afar - in a way, they are criticising the plot.

#anon #replies #FE16 #if only this game had better writing #but then if it had why would we care about the choice? #people who want a mole people path are already rejecting CF #they want the bigger story #and no the 'everything ended well' in the footnote doesn't count #why sothis came to fodlan? Why did she make children? #how those children and fodlan humans lived before? were they discriminated? Did some kids want to create their countries? #are there other beings like Sothis out there? what do they think of humans or nabateans? #did indech kill Thales's pet dog thus earning his eternal enemity? #why did they build this world like this if it is to never exploit it??? #it feels like naruto all over again

[agent-cupcake]

just curious, what’s your favorite and least favorite character design? my least fav for sure has got to be female byleth for reasons i don’t want to get in to yep ok have a good day 😁

IOops this accidentally became a rant, sorry

Okay so, to preface this all, I’m not a character designer and I’m actually pretty bad at it, but my rule of thumb with really unappealing or fan-service outfits is whether or not it makes sense character-wise and how much it tells the player about the character. For example, I think we can all agree that there’s quite a bit of fan-service elements in Hilda’s design. Boob window. However, it’s not unrealistic to imagine Hilda picking out those clothes for herself. Her costume tells you almost everything you need to know about her character on a visual level. She’s confident, pretty, attention-grabbing, and high maintenance while the gloves and laced girdle give a nod to her Viking-maiden roots.

Taking it to female Byleth, I don’t think that her outfit works on either front. Her design is definitely my least favorite and it’s not helped by the fact that you have to look at her at all times. Whatever. The huge, solid mass of boobs, the buttoned bib, the big eyes, the feather hair, the bellybutton, the ripped tights, the booty shorts. She’s a merc out in life and death situations with an accessible, pale, tacky 2000′s “stab me” stomach cut out and a wedgie. Which could be excusable if, like Hilda, there was reason to believe that that her costume was character choice. But she doesn’t really have much character, and what there is gives the impression of a very stoic, dry, blunt person. I have no idea why they’d have gone that route when the sexual appeal of more “utilitarian” costuming (aka, form fitting armor that at least pretends to be functional) for characters like her is scientifically proven AND would say more about the singular personality trait she possesses. Okay, well, I know why they didn’t do that and I think it’s lame. This dysfunction of “character designer wanted a sexy girl but it’s kinda random and just shoved in the game without any thought” actually reminds me a lot of Xenoblade 2′s leading ladies, Hikari and Pyra. Although considering that their bad designs led to a lot of people hating the game for superficial reasons while accepting female Byleth’s design, I guess I’m just bitter. Jumping to a different comparison, then, look at 2B from Nier Automata. Her design is fine as hell which is kinda hypocritical of me considering that it's explicitly fan-service, but I think it also shows the most damning thing for female Byleth. Her whole look, despite having a dozen different element thrown in, is boring. Maybe it’s the colors (dressing her in all black and white would have been really interesting considering the colors of the three lords are so heavily emphasized as a part of their characters) or maybe it’s just the way the desperate elements come together. But, like I said, I'm not even slightly knowledgeable about character design and I know that despite Three Houses being mostly separate, they had to appeal to a larger aesthetic brand to which I have little experience with. And, ultimately, a lot of people find her cute or sexy which...To each their own, I suppose. I don’t pretend that fan-service doesn’t work on me (2B... Cloud’s arms in the remake... Seph's shirtless Smash skin...) but when it’s this obviously inserted in by the character designers rather than feeling organic in any way AND looks bad I'm just not super interested.

The other worst designs for me would be all four of the Ashen Wolves post timeskip. I don't think it's controversial to say that they didn't try with the clothes, even if I love their designs from the neck up (Yes, even Balthus. He looks like the type of guy that would let you sit on his shoulders at a rock concert so you could see the stage). While there are other designs I think are unappealing, those are for purely aesthetic reasons and so I can't maintain the opinion that they're actively bad or that I even truly dislike them.

As for favorite looks... I actually have a few so sorry you're getting all of them because despite the shit I'm talking, I actually really really love the character designs in Three Houses. 

Ferdinand's post timeskip is one of my favorite designs, if not my favorite. The hair, the coat, the armor, the spurs, the colors. You know exactly who Ferdinand von Aegir is just by looking at him. He’s wealthy, handsome, confident in his appearance, a hero, a princely type character, his battle form is mounted combat which is traditionally aesthetically reserved for nobility and leaders... I love it. The only reason I cannot say he IS my favorite is because of the three Lords. But before them, my honorable mentions include post timeskip Hilda, Dorothea, Lorenz, Felix, and Hubert. Granted, I could make a case for why I like almost all of the student’s post timeskip looks.

For the Lords, I obviously have to start with colors because, weirdly enough, Persona didn’t invent primary colors but are actually used as shorthand. Blue is the color of honor, loyalty, sincerity, sadness, and depression. Something I’ve always found very interesting is that blue is very rarely found in nature. To me, that’s always made it seem more lonely which, at least in this case, is thematically relevant. People call Dimitri boring pre timeskip and while I won’t defend his hairstyle (okay, actually, I probably would because he tucks it behind his ears and idk why but that’s one of the cutest things ever) I really like how unassuming he is. Bland. He’s supposed to be the plain shortbread cookie to caramel deLite Claude and strawberry meringue Edelgard. It is not in his character to draw attention to himself or stand out. To me, he kinda looks like an old Barbie prince, like he should have been named Dominic. Also I love the blue eyes/blonde hair thing and his more angular features. It really helps to sell him as the fakeout chivalrous prince type. Post timeskip, Dimitri's black armor is amazing. I love the fact that it’s a lot more intricate up-close with the different little shell-like pieces and the fact that his boots are furry. I love the big cape and the black and white fur around his shoulders. It’s really cool how they used his costume to change the shape of his in-game model to match the bodily proportions of the character art. It’s easier to see when you change his costume into the DLC ones, but the fur and cape build up his shoulders and chest look more broad while keeping that tiny little waist. The choice to give Dimitri an eyepatch is probably my favorite thing about this design. It’s genuinely inspired. Such a simple detail yet it tells the player everything they need to know about adult Dimitri when they see him post timeskip, in one frame the player can begin to understand the extent of his loss over the past five years. The subtle shadow under his eye in the first few Azure Moon chapters and the messy long-ish hair really help to sell the feral prince aesthetic as well, as it’s from those small cues the player gets that he’s exhausted (in more ways than one) and doesn’t maintain himself. None of these things are intentional choices by Dimtiri, they’re the result of what his character has been through.

Yellow is an intense, energetic color. Mostly, people think of it as being warm and inviting, the color of the sun and positivity. That intensity can be overwhelming, though, too visually demanding when compared to its primary counterparts. Don’t stare at the sun too long. Buuuut, it’s okay to stare at Claude. Claude not wanting to wear tight pants in either of his costumes is not only a mood, it is iconic. Pre timeskip, the softer lines of his silhouette makes him look kinda slouchy, kinda lazy. Like he’s not too concerned with appearances. But those adorably messy curls, the little braid, the clearly tended eyebrows, and earring make it clear that he DOES care about appearances and is very aware of his allure. And that’s before he even starts winking. It is honestly so in character that as many people picked him first on the basis of being thirsty, that feels like an intentionally Claude thing even if it was inserted by the designers. The contrast of his complexion with his seagreen eyes is gorgeous and instantly adds a kind of mystery and intrigue to him considering the setting... but it’s sf funny that nobody looked at bronze god Claude among a sea of white faces and thought something was up. Post timeskip, they used the same trick like they did with Dimitri to change Claude’s in-game model to match his canon appearance. The way they designed his uniform makes him not look as twink-ish, like he’s actually muscular and imposing and has the strength he’d need to shoot a war bow with a 120lbs draw weight. Also like Dimitri, you can instantly tell what Claude’s been up to. Like, he was very pretty pre timeskip but when he shows up in the Goddess Tower after those five years in all that gold, he demands your attention. Like a gentleman general with the excessive aesthetic ideals of the Alliance and details to imply his heritage. The quilted pants are amazing from both an aesthetic and practical standpoint. He’s a mounted unit riding a creature with scales, of course he’d want something on his legs for protection. And the chinstrap. I love that so much, it definitely makes him look more adult. He’s got such a cute soft baby face, it’s fun imagining him experimenting with different styles during the five years to get the most desired physical reaction to him as a leader. 

Frenchfries, meet forehead. No, actually, Edelgard’s design is really fantastic. Claude and Dimitri both have realistically colored eyes and hair and then there’s Edelgard. Dimitri shrugs off attention physically and Claude shirks it with a wink but Edelgard commands the players attention from the very start. Although I’m sure there’s a lot of things to associate with white hair and purple eyes, my first thought was Daenerys from Game of Thrones. Otherworldly beautiful by with an edge. Red, of course, is The power color. Strong emotions, love and hate. Red is also associated strongly with blood, which is very important to Edelgard’s plot. Granted, I think the red and black association is even more powerful than JUST red and red is the cheapest play to make in regards to displaying villainy (I mean, there are some pretty universally recognized associations with red and black and it led to people making some unfair comparisons between Edelgard and a famous dictator) but I think it was effective and well used and I genuinely enjoy its use in her case. Anyway, if I had a major complaint about her design it would be the weird ashy color of her hair whereas Lysithea’s hair is pure white. Which doesn’t even matter with the AMAZING hair horns. Ram horns can actually symbolize quite a few things, but their association with power and strength is pretty universal I think. They’re also used in demonic imagery. I love that THIS was her alternative to a crown. Edelgard views herself as a force of war and power before she thinks of herself as royalty. She also mentions that she isn’t super vain, but she loves to do her hair, so the hair being the most elaborate part of her look is entirely in-character. Edelgard’s ensemble is, like Claude, very militaristic. I love that they kept her in a dress that embraces femininity without showing skin as that wouldn’t really suit her Also, again, Edelgard demands your attention. She’s dressed all in bright bright red waving around a giant axe. She is a symbol as much as she is a combatant, someone to follow. I didn’t really mention their secondary lord costumes, but a girl in sexy armor is literally everything and I love that they had the balls to put their main sexy waifu girl in full body armor.

Okay I’m sorry I realize this was excessive and probably didn’t need explaining and I’m not sure I even articulated my thoughts properly but anyway I love their designs so here is the positivity I’ll put into the world.

#fe3h #ferdinand von aegir #claude von riegan #edelgard von hresvelg #dimitri alexandre blaiddyd #haha i htae byleths design this was all just to justify my abject disgust for the way she looks #nobody sent me anything about dimitri's dick so this is what i've been reduced to

[furry-emblem]

You know what, after talking about how biases and stuff mess with 3H discourse, I'm going to go over my biases and personal experiences with each major faction leader because I feel like it. I don’t really want people arguing with me on these, but I would like to hear other people describing their experiences with these characters because that’s always interesting to read about. I'm listing the characters in order of how much I liked them.

Byleth

Also known as erotica, keyboard smash, Sothis, another keyboard smash, BoobBoob, and Boobama. I really dislike them. I’ve never been particularly fond of silent or self-insert protagonists. At best, they signal to me that the game isn’t going to bother with its story or character writing (and that’s fine when that’s the case), while at worst, it’s the writers taking the most important character in the story and then throwing their hands up and saying “we don’t need to write this one.” Byleth feels like the ladder and it’s to the detriment of pretty much everyone around them. Like, even considering that silent protagonists are supposed to be characters that the player projects onto, Byleth doesn’t do a good job at this because there’s enough canonical descriptions of them that you can’t really roleplay, but there’s so little going on that they don’t stand on their own two feet. So it’s like having a piece of cardboard dictate the fate of the country. They also primarily function as a wall for characters to exposition dump their backstories onto, which isn’t very interesting to watch. Like, 3H would have been better off without Byleth in it. 0/10.

Rhea

I just haven't had the chance to see a lot of her stuff, so I think I'm missing some of the stuff that makes people like her (and I'd prefer to not have that spoiled for me). Haven't seen her supports or the Church Route, but she just hasn't left me with a good impression. I don't like how possessive she gets of Byleth. Like, it creeps me out a little. I'm also a bit disappointed that you never get to play as her. I want the pope to bitch slap people (except not my people). I remember her being an antagonist in CF felt kind of forced to me when I first played because her reactions felt a bit silly. The problem wasn't whether they were justified or not, the problem was lack of context given and the fact that she was saying stuff like "You will BURN in the PITS OF HELL" while standing perfectly still and making this face >:(. And I just couldn't take that seriously for whatever reason because it felt cheesy and I didn't really understand what was going on. It also soured any endearment Rhea showed towards Byleth to me on future routes because her actions in CF gave me the impression of her being obsessive and controlling of Byleth. Like, she acted entitled to their loyalty, expected them to be something they never asked for, and flipped the fuck out when they rejected. It reminded me a lot of some abuse I've gone through and it made me dislike the character. Now that I have more context on the character, I get why she reacted so suddenly and violently because CF kinda threw all of her triggers at her. It feels like she dug her grave in that route, but she dug it in a way that resembles a Greek Tragedy more than anything else. My second route was Claude's route, which thoroughly disappointed me in terms of its writing. When Rhea was exposition dumping her backstory, I was like "I'm boooored," so that really didn't help my opinion of the character. I also don't really like how she gets damsels in three out of four routes. I still don't actively like the character very much because she left a really sour taste in my mouth, but I understand that I'm missing information and that there are reasons to like her. I'm open to learning more about her, but she just really rubs me the wrong way.

Yuri

I never finished Cindered Shadows and I have no real opinion on Yuri. I thought he was a girl when I first saw him and I think he's fun to play as in gameplay, so I guess there's that. I don't really see myself replaying Cindered Shadows if I even finish it because it lacks a lot of the major things I liked from 3H.

Seteth

Does he even get to count? Like, he's not in charge and Rhea should've probably been the leader of Silver Snow. Haven't played that route yet. I like Seteth. He's got good dad energy and also he's my wife (specifically in Verdent Wind). He's got good vibes. Also, if you kill Flayn in Crimson Flower, his English voice acting when he's like "Flayn Noooo" gets to me. I still really like Seteth. A solid 8/10 for me.

Dmitri

I wasn't following Three Houses advertising at all, so I didn't know anything about anyone going in. I was originally just going to skip him entirely because he looked boring and had shitty hair. So I did his route last. Partially out if curiosity for the character, partially because I might as well do every major route since I'd already done Claude and Edelgard, partially to get to know some of the Blue Lions, and partially because some of Edelgard's backstory is only revealed in this route and I was curious about that. Dmitri's route definitely has the best writing out of any of the routes. I really like how personal the route is and how much it focuses on how one specific event impacted all of the characters in it. There are some big problems I have with the route and Dmitri, like how the game uses psychosis to represent Dmitri being murdery and how him changing his mind felt more like Byleth's decision than his own due to their conversation being pretty bad. But overall, he has the best writing. I'd strongly recommend playing through his route if you haven't just because the writing's rather good there. The reason why he's ranked below Claude and Edelgard, however, is pretty simple: I just don't vibe with him. Like, the hero archetype bores the hell out of me, even when it is subverted like it is here. I also just didn't relate to the character on really any level while I did with Claude and Edelgard. The amount of Edelgard slander in his name also annoys me, but I don't think it really impacts how much I like Dmitri. He's a well written character that I just don't vibe with. I also remember his death in Verdant Wind and being like “wtf was that??” Like, the writers killed him offscreen.. twice. In the same route.

Claude 

I really enjoyed Claude as a character. He left a good first impression on me and I almost picked him for my first playthrough because he’s hot and sassy. Two good traits for any character. I ended up picking Edelgard, though, and he left a good impression on me during CF. I like that he held the alliance together and had a contingency plan for if he lost that battle. When I played his route, I ended up going Hard Mode NG+ Casual and I stuck everyone on a dragon. I did find it funny that throughout the school phase, Claude learns bow stuff repeatedly, then in one of the last months, he went up to me and was like “hey, can you start teaching me in axe and flying?” Which he had nothing in either. Then timeskip happens and he comes waltzing in on a dragon. Claude is where all the good memes in the fandom go. That said, I really disliked his route because Claude felt like an afterthought in it (because he literally was). I don’t like that I got out of the route and it felt like I didn’t know as much more about the character going out than I did going in. Some of that is because I didn’t see a ton of his supports, which is where pretty much all of the character work is. I like how Claude is open minded and actively tries to seek out the truth. So, overall, I found his route a bit disappoint but I still really like him because he’s a fun character.

Edelgard

I fucking love Edelgard. She was my first pick and therefore the character that introduced me to the game, and by extension, the series of Fire Emblem. I picked her because she’s pretty, she looked ready to fistfight god from the word go, and she seemed like the mascot of the game so I figured the writers might put a bit extra effort into her route (they didn’t, rip). My very first playthrough was actually a Normal/Classic run, but I had to abandon the run because literally everyone died four hours into the save (I swapped to Normal/Casual). Edelgard ended up carrying me through my first playthrough. I stuck her on a dragon and she killed literally everyone and everything. In my most recent playthrough of the game, I did CF and made her an archer mage dancer for the memes and that was also a ton of fun to play with. Her gameplay feel had a role in me liking her (like, Dmitri is also very powerful, but it was my third playthrough and I knew what I was doing better by then, so him being just as OP as Edelgard didn’t really influence my opinion on him as much as it did her). 

Besides the gameplay, Edelgard’s probably the major character that I relate to the most. Every character on this list (except maybe Byleth or Yuri, I know literally nothing about Yuri tho) has experience with trauma and is coping with it in some way. Edelgard copes by villainizing herself and shutting off her emotions, but despite that, she’s still a low-empathy person who’s still very compassionate person who cares about others and is trying to do the right thing. She also generally tries to express some amount of compassion to her enemies, even if it’s little more than saying “it sucks that Dmitri had to die.” She’s not as open-minded or as truth-seeking as Claude is, but she still tries to keep herself open to other viewpoints and will readily accept any she deems as valid at a moment’s notice. I just really like that about her because I share a lot of those traits in common with her. I also like the idea of her being someone who’s willing to do evil things to bring good to the world. That’s not something you normally get in a protagonist and I think that’s a cool idea. 

I still found her route to be very awkward, especially with no context. Like, I missed the line where Edelgard’s like “yeah, btw, I’m the Flame Emperor,” so I was just wondering what happened there. It’s an anticlimactic way to end the main plot of the first half of the game. I also didn’t really get Rhea’s angle at all. So the route just felt a lot like “I guess I’m doing this now??” In other routes, I found her deaths to be very hard hitting. The death in Verdant Wind only really got me because I really liked Edelgard and she was my original student and I could feel how much she wanted to make her future a reality and how her failing meant all of those sacrifices she made and the evils she’d done would now all be for nothing. I get that impression with Azure Moon’s ending too. 

Most of my appreciation for the character does come from her support conversations. I like how her chain with Bernie has her trying to learn how to not scare her off. Her interactions with Dorothea in their support chain are kind of sad because Dorothea is trying to show her admiration and love for Edelgard in a way that makes sense to her but then Edelgard’s low view of herself causes her to reject the offer. I really liked her Manuela support too (haven’t seen Hanneman’s but I’ve heard that it’s good). I like how with Manuela, Edelgard learns why people are religious and she that being religious doesn’t make you weak. I like her Linhart support where he calls her out for trying to dictate his life and she responds by trying to overhaul some of her own systems and assumptions about him, which leads to her giving him a role to the empire that also properly accommodates for his needs. I like how with Ferdinand’s supports, he has to learn to let go of their rivalry, but once that does happen, Edelgard takes into account his ideas and roles with them. I think it’s funny that she and Hubert flirt with each other by sending each other credible death threats. Edelgard just has a lot of very good supports. Don’t get me wrong, Claude and Dmitri also have supports that are good (I thought Claude’s support chain with Petra was cute and I really like Dmitri’s support chain with Flayn), but Edelgard’s supports go a long way to paint her as someone who is flawed but still really admirable.

Edelgard is definitely one of my favorite fictional characters, and I’d love to see more characters like her in the future.

#fe3h #fe3h discussion #byleth #rhea #edelgard #claude #dmitri #yuri #seteth #I feel like seteth is less of a leader and more like Byleth's and Rhea's retainer #but whatever #I like all of the three major house leaders #byleth and rhea are the only two characters here that I dislike #and with rhea there's a heavy dose of ''i haven't formed my entire opinion yet'' #i think i'd like rhea better if I could make her punch people in the face #like that would be a pretty strong motivator to get me to play silver snow #dick slam rhea would be the mvp of life #a solid meme capable of maybe even outmeming claude in my eyes

[kendrixtermina]

The “Genocidal Edelgard” Shallowtake

I was not going to make a post about this because it’s most likely futile and not going to convince anyone nor do I believe in dinifying the purity police with attention, but maybe it will let some ppl know that they dont have to let themselves be shamed for liking the wrong video game character

Whatever might have been the case in the distant past when Nemesis was around, by the “present day” the Nabateans are not at all some commonly oppressed stereotyped minority - the setting is chock full of characters that fit that bill a lot better like Dedue or Cyril. Characters that are ordinary humans not magic dragons. 

And even that is more founded on general purpose xenophobia than from the specific, relatively new early modernity construct of racism. (the dedue situation probably comes the closest)

Sure, Seteth and Flays have to hide from their old enemy the Agarthans, I see how some might find that relatable etc. but most of the population isn’t aware that they exist at all. They hold high status positions, are worshipped by the local religion and Rhea all but rules the entire continent (and says so herself to Byleth in that speech about how she was just “ruling this wayward country in your stead”, “you” being Sothis) - though that is mostly Rhea’s doing of which Seteth and Flayn are relatively innocent. 

The interviews pretty much confirmed that the Nabateans constituted the local aristocracy and that many humans genuinely saw the Elites as liberators - though there was definitely also an element of ppl going around killing random Nabateans to gain superpowers, not to speak of Nemesis’ very obvious very unambiguous mass murder. Not wanting to be ruled over by foreign powers is understandable, though obviously killing them all down to the last civilian was just flat out evil - its certainly not a simple situation, we can all agtree Nemesis & the Agarthans were evil but there is no clear defined good guy. 

There are historical conflicts you could compare this to, perhaps some conflicts in Africa or the middle eastwhere different groups took turns being the ruling class after the latest war,  but it’s not at all like the modern USA or early modernity colonialism, and forcing every real or, in this case, imagined scenario inherently dependent of fantasy elements, into this one framework from the present or near past isn’t conductive to understanding at all. 

And in the present day, by the time Edelgard is alive, we are talking about three specific people that she has good reason to dislike individually. Not any sort of group at all. 

She calls Rhea a cruel beast because that’s all she’s ever seen Rhea to be. She’s the shadow tyrant who rules her world, who created the crappy world Edelgard grew up in. It’s no different Cubans thiking badly of the castros after suffering through famines - or, no need for such extreme examples really, ppl call their least favorite politicians monsters all the time. 

She’s wrong to assume that Seteth & Flayn are wholly on board with this, but on the other hand, it’s not at all a far-fetched assumption to make: They hold high positions in the church though they ostensimbly just appreared out of nowhere one day. Do you have to be an evil bigot to assume that the brother and right hand man to the tyrannical god-queen is condoning & supporting her actions?

The truth is of course that underneath her pseudo-parental facade Rhea is sort of a scared girl, very lonely, very afraid, and ashamed, in a shallow, childish way, for “breaking the rules” just because they are rules. She says she can’t trust anyone, that she feels lonely & isolated... and while no one can blame her for distrusting humans after the slaughter of her people, but the reason she can’t trust Seteth is that she’s keeping her bad deeds secret from him. He wasn’t there the whole time, he just showed up a few decades earlier. 

She sees herself only as filling out for Sothis and doesn’t quite grasp that she’s in charge, very much a follower personality bent on stasis & regularity. 

Is Edelgard obliged to try & unravel the complex psychology of the tyrant who rules her home to correctly deduce why she would deceive even her own family? By all intents and purposes, Edelgard is the one getting rid of an oppressive government that doesn’t let ordinary humans let a say at all. A government where ppl of others faiths and nationalities are typically oppressed unless they work directly for the church.

It’s like having a disdain for, say, Ivanka Trump. She holds a high position in her father’s administration despite having no obvious qualifications, she appears to be profiting & making bank from her father’s atrocities, she certainly hasn’t done anything to stop him or disavow him the way that, say, her cousin Mary did - if you suffered under Trump’s regime you’d be very justified in assuming that Invanka is probably a bad person.

Flayn only looks young (She might not if we saw her in other clothes). I mean, Kronya could badly impersonate a schoolgirl. At the very least they’ve supported the regime by refusing to question their own side and they show some however benevolent belief that it is their duty to “guide” the people. Leaving her to the Agarthans is certainly questionable, but no more so than doing it with Rhea herself, under the assumption that she’s guilty and that it’s a sacrifice that will prevent larger chaos. The agarthans had their plan long before they created Edelgard as we know her, and she couldn’t stop their plots all on her own. 

You could say that it’s callous, distasteful or a deal breaker - as the death knight is her direct subordinate & she makes a personal appearance in mask, I would argue that she definitely knew & sanctioned the kidnapping - but she’s no more callous towards Flayn than towards anybody else. 

Of course, that doesn’t mean they’re evil, or that they deserve to die.... and Edelgard would agree with me.  She doing all this to prevent death – flipping the lever on the trolley problem so it crushes one person instead of five so to speak. She always gives her enemies the chance to surrender, unwilling allies the chance to leave, and jails enemies whenever leaving them alive wouldn‘t lead to further death… even the ones she has the most personal reason to hate, like the PM.

As servants of the church who have chosed to back her enemies, she’ll certainly kill them if she has to, but not any more than any other enemy. At no point anywhere in the story does she say anything like that they need to die on principle. Nowhere at all. Indeed there is much evidence to the contrary.

The church paints her as being completely against the religion or even wanting to set herself up as a satanic godess cause it‘s good politics & they don‘t get what she‘s doing – to an extent her own credibility & messaging is compromised by her secretive and at times unscrupulous actions, no one said she was perfect. In truth all she wants is to have the church out of politics, you know, what we have in nearly every modern country outside the vatican and saudi arabia.

You can absolutely let Flayn & Seteth go on CF and there is no word, no fuss about it anywhere. No „make sure to kill em all“ which would certainly be there if the narrative wanted to portray Edelgard that way. It requires the mediation of Byleth as someone they would talk to & not immediately assume the worst of, but, they see the church as the embodymet of all that is good & fighting its enemies as their sacred duty so of course it wouldn‘t be possible for just anyone to talk them down. It‘s framed as Flayn letting Byleth go cause they saved her life once, even if we know from behind the screen that she wasn‘t going to survive a fight to the death against the player-controlled faction.

Heck, even when it comes to Rhea, the one most guilty that Edelgard has the most reason to loathe, she‘s ultimately surprisingly gracious. She gives her the option to surrender – and this is not a lie, she discusses this with Byleth in a lecture question, and seriously ponders the possibility. Here Byleth gets a range of options like „stab her in the back“ and „keep the church under imperial control“ but you know which one nets you the support points? „Strip her of her authority so she can‘t interfere in politics“. She wasn‘t gonna mess with the religious folks & their religion at all, just make it so it‘s separate from government. Rhea could even keep being pope, if she could be satisfied without having complete supreme authority (and ripping her precious artifact out of Byleth‘s chest) – even when she puts her down she‘s not 100% without pity, telling her that „Your duty is done“ (the translators mucked this up)

Couldn‘t be any further from „lets kill them all on principle“.

What really annoys me is how ppl go and twist everything Edelgard says out of context to ascribe a motive to her that just isn’t there.

Common examples:

„If you have Flayn or Seteth fight her she‘ll say they need to die because they‘re nabateans“

Actually what she says is this: „You are a child of the godess. You must not have power over the people!“ Not getting to be privileges rulers anymore =/= being opressed. Stay out of politics =/= Diediedie. Also, this is from the VW/SS boss fight, where they have literally come to get her in her own capital.

„Linhard & Leonie don‘t tell her & hubert about Indech, probably cause he expects that she‘ll go & kill him„

What he actually says is: „Lake Teutates is a place that concerns the saints of the Church of Seiros. It may become bothersome should the two of them find out...“

„It may be bothersome“ as in, „we might get in trouble“, for doing the possibly very inadvisable thing of waltzing into what could possibly be an enemy location to satisfy personal curiosity. If it‘s something related to her agenda she might take over and Linny wouldn‘t get to investigate as he pleases – at very most you might construe it as Linny fearing that they‘ll be accused of consorting with the enemy, but „bothersome“ suggest possible annoyance not imminent murder.

The whole scene ends with Linhard telling Byleth to fill her in later. Doesn‘t sound at all like he expects her to go back with a harpoon.

„She said Claude isn‘t fit to be a ruler cause he‘s a foreigner“

What she actually says: „I understand your ideals are not so far removed from my own. But without knowledge of Fodlan‘s history, I cannot entrust its rule to you“

Now without the additional contexts that Claude won‘t get until after the fight, it might easily feel a bit like the former with the raw spots he‘d have from his backstory, but what she means is that he‘s ignorant of the Agarthan threat – which he is. Edelgard is all for making peace with Almyra and sees fostering isolationism & prejudice as one of the many faults of the church.

Once Claude basically kills Edelgard for information, he winds up having to take care of the storm she had been holding back. But to his credit, he DID „finish the job“ and get the info. But he didn‘t have it at that point.

And I don‘t mean any of this in the least bit as a diss of Claude - He is the smartest character, so there would be no plot if he got easy access to the info.  At this point, they both think they can probably do better, and more importantly, both their backstories have made them so that they won‘t let down their guard far enough to cooperate in this scenario.

That‘s also why the outcome in CF is contingent on Byleth‘s choice. - You‘d sort of have to trust that he will also act so as to minimize casualties.

Very disingenious since many players wouldn‘t necessarily trigger these dialogues.

I guess because Adrestia got a vaguely central-european aesthetic (partially; all the countries are hodgepodge mashups and there’s more than enough spanish or ancient roman vibes there) and central europe existed only for those 12 years of tyranny I guess, even though many other places have had similar BS happening, including the US that delights in making craptons of movies about their faraway victory because their governments haven’t added much of value to the planet as of late. -.- 

Faerghus (vaguely french/ russian - not at all places where nothing bad happened ever) has actually annexed some territory from their northern neighbors in the recent past, not to speak of the whole Duscur atrocity - but no one seems to go around laying that at Dimitri’s feet, because it would be nonsensical - he was a child at the time and as an individual he is super against it and champions a policy of reconcilliation if he gets to rule. after all, there wouldn’t be much of a plot if the characters inherited three perfect faultless problem free countries. 

Edelgard, too, is completely against the previous administration under Duke Aegir (which was in charge during the Bridgid war). She deposed him and is plotting to do the same with Arundel once she can politically afford to do so. For all that one can understand why she would chose the other path  (depending on how much she knows about what Edelgard’s doing and why) it makes all the sense in the world for Petra to support her on CF or if not recruited, because again, she got rid of that previous administration. 

#edelgard #edelgard von hresvelg #fe3h #fire emblem: three houses #fire emblem three houses

[themoomoorn]

Jeralt Eisner Stinky

Related to my previous reblog, feel free to parouse as to why I agree that Jeralt is a bad dad, and the fact that the devs’ lack of a continuity checker made him look worse than the director likely intended him to.

Let’s count the ways:

- Went a very melodramatic 180 regarding Rhea when Byleth - who was resuscitated from friggin’ death - wasn’t behaving like a “normal baby.”  Now to be fair, Rhea was too mum for her own good and a baby that’s not very reactive to stimuli is very concerning in real life, but real life ties lose some of their weight due to Byleth’s wonky parentage and the reason for her lack of heartbeat.  Jeralt is also generally perturbed by Byleth not being “normal” for quite a while, which is pretty shitty of him anyway.  

- As a response to the above, it’s implied that he was the one who set the monastery on fire when absconding with Byleth in the night, a fire that was reported to have caused some serious damage and destroyed a lot of books.

- There’s also the fact that he was aware that Sitri herself suffered from a flat affect and struggled to emote more expressively at first, and he himself is pretty emotionally constipated.  It’d be more shocking if Byleth grew up suddenly acting like Alois. 

- He loved Sitri for basically being a cute little innocent nun, likely seeing her as ideal housewife material.  I know I’m using the term “housewife” in a damning fashion, but he loves her for some seriously basic, surface-level reasons.  Plus the whole “getting her to emote and smile more” bit?  Granted, Claude’s relationship with Byleth grows in a somewhat similar fashion, but Claude also easily adheres the least to 3H’s “avatar worship” and he doesn’t just become fond of Byleth due to her smiling and getting cuter because of that.  You can’t say the same of Jeralt and Sitri.

- While one can’t entirely damn someone for raising a child in the mercenary lifestyle due to the setting - We got a Lord and his sister being raised under similar circumstances - The sheer ignorance that Jeralt raised Byleth with is pretty damning if the gameplay/narrative element (Byleth being ignorant for the sake of player projection and exposition) is taken away.  It’s one thing to not necessarily be aware of the ins and outs of the major religion of an entire continent, but Byleth doesn’t even have much basic knowledge of Fodlan’s three countries, or any country outside of it, although most of Fodlan doesn’t either. There is also more damning text, including how Jeralt handled all of their job logistics and didn’t bother to put in any incentive to have Byleth possibly learn to inherit or learn the ins and outs of the company.  The quest where you get Jeralt’s old tactics primer also reveals that he didn’t bother to teach Byleth basic battle tactics either. 

- Where the heck was Byleth when Jeralt was in Sauin Village???  Not even Byleth herself remembers.  And while it’s heartwarming to see that Jeralt still cares for Leonie after reuniting with her (With people who bash Leonie for her fixation on him naturally ignoring this), he seems to put more effort in bonding with her than his own child.  She’s also the one who winds up inheriting his company, although that can also be attributed to Byleth being presumed dead when she does.

- He doesn’t really say much when it comes to Byleth’s “Ashen Demon” title, which is notably one of the very few things that genuinely upsets Byleth prior to her becoming more emotive.  And while it’s hinted that Byleth herself didn’t express interest in interacting with other people casually, Jeralt wasn’t exactly helping matters in that department either, exacerbating their isolation from others.  Heroes has the default Female Byleth note that she can’t tell a friend from an ally due to how she grew up.

- The man’s a raging alcoholic who performed some pretty stupid, deadly shit, including a trick that had a high chance of beheading Alois.  His treatment of Alois is also pretty deplorable, as is the fact that he has a slew of unpaid bar tabs that get shouldered by Alois and then forced onto Leonie.  

- Going back to meta and tying to how a lack of continuity checking affected 3H, Jeralt spent a lot of time fretting over Byleth being even remotely exposed to the church when there’s plenty of folks who, while aware of the faith, do not actively practice at all, pay lip service at best, or even show some disdain like the three Lords do.  Exploring lore also hampers the idea that the church is omnipotent and omnipresent: The Empire’s church branch was flat-out gutted for well over a century with practically no faith-based services available (this is a crux for Dorothea’s hatred of the faith and also cited with Mercedes’ history; she and her mother had to go to the Kingdom to find any kind of religious sanctuary after getting kicked out of House Bartels), the Alliance’s church branch has no political sway specifically because of how said Alliance is governed, and the Kingdom’s church branch has its own problems due to the zealotry, radicalism, differences in opinions of the faith, and eventual manipulation by the Agarthans that led it crossing blades with the Central branch.  

Plus, you know, Rhea never bothered to pursue Jeralt after he ran away.  And Alois’ contingent of knights appearing in Remire that fateful evening was pure happenstance, plus how Jeralt doesn’t even operate his company under a pseudonym or anything practical like that.  So with these in mind, it’s actually pretty reasonable to consider that Byleth can at least be somewhat unaware of the Seiros faith without Jeralt’s input.

- While it’s unrelated to Jeralt being Stinky, I find it irksome that a lot of folks will jump right on Jeralt hating Rhea and the church in wake of the man himself acknowledging that taking Byleth away from the monastery (or at least not giving them a stable place to grow up) was probably a huge mistake upon seeing them flourish as a teacher.  He also gets gutted for ultimately putting two and two together and realizing that the Empire may be involved with the group that’s been terrorizing the monastery during all of the 1180 school year, and tells off the Flame Emperor when they claim they’re not culpable for the Remire Massacre.  It’s hard to tell whether or not the man would side with Edelgard with enough persuasion or propaganda, or how he’d react to Byleth becoming one with Sothis and taking on their position as a major figure within the church for three out of four routes with some degree of fanfare and acceptance (which players naturally ignore to warp into Byleth being a shrieking harpy church-basher, or a church victim that El-chan or Claude has to ~save~ her from, naturally).  But it’s proof that people can’t really read - the guy wasn’t having the FE’s excuses, plain and simple.

- The above also ties to how Leonie is derailed in Crimson Flower, as she’s one of the few who unambiguously knows that the Fork Emperor is working with the same group that had Jeralt killed, in addition to all of the hell they caused therein.  Naturally, her excuse if recruited on Flower is - wait for it - Jeralt was pissy at Rhea for reasons Leonie never finds out about, but since Byleth-chan is siding with El-chan, it’s all well and good now.

- There’s also the profoundly depressing meta that if Byleth were allowed to be their own character, a continuity person was maybe in place, and Jeralt wasn’t a glorified plot device, then he had all the makings to be a great deconstruction of Greil from FE9.  The parallels are all there, but naturally they’re not put to good use, or blithely ignored outside of Supports.  This also ties to just how heavily players project onto Byleth, possibly even more so than Robin or Corrin.  Since they really project onto Byleth as Kusakihara and his goons intended, Jeralt is naturally tied to players’ real life father figures by osmosis, despite the fact that Jeralt himself definitely isn’t a good father figure. 

While having a consistent continuity checker wouldn’t be a fix-all to 3H’s problems (Kusakihara’s dismissive attitude towards having one and consistency in general is pretty damning in itself), it likely would’ve at least tightened the worldbuilding that the devs prided themselves on and offered some more consistency, even if the price is showing unpleasant truths such as Jeralt being stinky.

#fire emblem three houses #fe3h #fire emblem three houses meta #byleth eisner #jeralt reus eisner #fe3h critical #game development #let's also not forget how players warp what little character Byleth has either #the lack of a continuity checker really hurts this game #toshiyuki kusakihara sucks

[fantasyinvader]

I just want to explain my stand on the translation of 3H.

Whether it was in ignorance of the meanings behind the symbolism (or even if it was meant to be symbolism at all), or because someone decided to change the script for whatever reason (avoiding controversy after Fates, for instance), I’ve often argued that those changes change the story the game is trying to tell. Like, a few lines altered can change so much considering how crucial they may end up being. Hell, how a line is said can have the same effect.

If I may, I want to compare this to another video game. Final Fantasy 7. Now 7 has it’s translation issues, don’t get me wrong, but that’s not what I’m going to be talking about here. What I’m going to be talking about is the compilation of Final Fantasy 7 and what it does to the game.

See, one of the things about FF7 was how it used death. Writer’s can use the death of a character in any number of ways. They can make a heroic last stand, showing how awesome they are. Their death can clue the others into a greater mystery, or trigger development for them. It can reinforce themes, draw parallels, or serve as a motivation to stop the bad guy du jour. 

But with FF7, deaths were rather...mundane. They weren’t cinematic, they weren’t telegraphed, people just died. That’s why Aeris’s (I use this for nostalgic purposes) stood out so much, it was sudden and unexpected. You just completed a big dungeon after she went missing, Cloud stopped himself from killing her by not letting Sephiroth control him, and all seems right. She looks up to you, smiling, only to be impaled from above and die without another word. Cloud’s dialogue before the boss fight asserts that she is no more, and her theme plays all throughout it. Then your characters are left to process their grief. It’s a powerful moment, one that stuck with a lot of players.

And FF7 is filled with these sorts of deaths. Zack, Cloud’s best friend and the real 1st Class SOLDIER, he doesn’t get a big death. His death scene is completely optional, requiring the player to revisit the Shinra mansion without reason to trigger it, and in the end he’s killed by a few mooks outside of Midgar. Cait Sith reminds Barret that the terrorist attack you committed at the beginning of the game killed hundreds of people, pointing out their lives were all they had when Barret tries to claim the greater good (the greater good). The people of Sector 7 crushed under the plate, Cloud’s mother, Tifa’s teacher and parents, Tseng dying to Sephiroth in a mistranslation I find improves the game because it adds to this motif...The game does not romanticize death or it’s effect on the people around it.

But then you get into the Compilation. Zack’s death is fucking awesome after all, passing on final words to Cloud that he will be Zack’s living memory after saving the world from a crisis that was retconned in. Before Crisis tried to claim that the plans for the bomb were from an earlier, more violent version of AVALANCE while Remake makes it so the damage was worsened by Shinra themselves. Sephiroth can return from the dead because of his desire for revenge, making it so that he “will never be a memory.” Hojo uploaded his memory into the internet or something. In Remake, Barret will be killed by Sephiroth only to be revived by the Arbiters of Fate.

And let me take a second to talk about the idea that they’re meant to reflect fans who would be upset at changes to the story of FF7, while the implications of the game make it out that the original is meant to be a bad ending the protagonists now want to avoid. Like, that is one hell of a slap in the face right there. Yeah, now try to tell me that Remake will be more faithful from here on out and maybe try to sell ice in Alaska while you’re at it.

Part of that is the story being handed off to other people. Like, Nomura was given a huge hand in shaping what FF7 became while he mostly a character designer for the original game. People who pushed their own views of what FF7′s story should be, both in the game itself and the world around it. X has the same problem, where with each new addition I can only feel pity for what it has become.

That’s what I’m feeling with 3H. That I wasn’t given the game as it was intended to be. That Treehouse put their own spin on it, however minor it might appear to be. That the symbolism and messages the game was built around were either ignored or discarded, and the more I’ve looked into it I start feeling bad for it’s original creators. I mean, think about it. You create this game with a secretly villain protagonist in order to trick players and in Japan they seem to have caught onto it. But outside of Japan, people are arguing that she’s actually the real hero while everyone else is some degree of wrong. That people are fully willing to disregard the world building of your story, something you wanted them to immerse themselves in to discover the truth, simply saying that Edelgard’s right and everything else is a filthy lie.

(kinda on the fence about getting Remake...but kinda leaning towards getting it if there’ price drop. Still want to complete Type 0 first)

[gascon-en-exil]

Bottom Ten Three Houses Characters

I decided after a while that I couldn’t fulfill an anon request to do a top 10 list for the whole series, because it would overlap too much with ones I’ve already done - lord privilege is a thing that exists, and I’ve ranked those before - and because it’s really difficult to compare so many characters (~600 if we’re being thorough) across so many different games.  Instead I decided to go negative with it, although around 2/3rds of these ought to be totally uncontroversial at least in my corner of the fandom. Starting from the one I dislike least:

(Dis)honorable Mention: Anna, for putting in such a lackluster showing that she doesn’t deserve a spot on this list despite technically being in the playable cast. It’s not only the lack of supports, although that hurts, but also how obvious it is that the writers have no new material for her. Anna’s gimmick worked fined when she was an NPC and perhaps for the space of a single game as a playable character, and Fates originated the meta idea of making her paid DLC so you have to shell out real money to use her, but that’s the extent of her here too. As a unit she’s far from spectacular, and her paralogue isn’t even good for much but a ton of (mostly mediocre) drops and a tiny bit of context for that Pallardó guy from non-CF Chapter 13. Here’s a revolutionary idea: for the next original FE it might be good to have Anna back to being only a wacky dimension-hopping NPC shopkeeper.

#10 Constance - It pains me that she’s on this list, more than anyone else by far. I really wanted to like Constance, and at first glance she’s right up my alley as a haughty impoverished aristocrat coping awkwardly with her diminished status. I like the dark flier class she’s built around, and her default personality is an even louder pre-timeskip Ferdinand whom you know I love. However, it’s that “default personality” bit that sours me on her, because she’s got two of them. What could have been an interesting take on Constance’s struggles with identity and self-esteem in the wake of her family’s disgrace is presented in such an over-the-top comedic manner that it’s impossible to take her very seriously. It’s more reminiscent of FE13′s Noire than anything, and at least she has the excuse of a mother who performed dark magic experiments on her and fractured her psyche. Constance also supports Jeritza and yet somehow they do no more than lightly allude to their personality issues which is as much a missed opportunity as you can get with such a terrible character (see below), opting instead to try softening Jeritza with his fondness for roses. Lovely.

#9 Leonie - Fandom exaggerates her Jeralt fixation, although it does pop up at the worst times (see: her Byleth support right after his death). As I’m not very concerned with Byleth’s nonexistent feelings though this placement more comes down to general indifference. Leonie feels completely disconnected from the rest of the Deer, and although she’s a supposed reflection of the house’s more egalitarian bent there’s nothing connecting her to the politics or larger culture of the Alliance until you learn about her student loan debt. She really is best understood as a Jeralt fangirl first and foremost, which is why perhaps the most surprising thing about her is when reality comes knocking in her endings and it turns out she picked up her mentor’s vices as well. Jeralt himself would be even further down this list were he playable, but as he isn’t I’ll have to settle for side-eyeing all of his adoring fans. Which brings me to....

#8 Alois - Remember that dating sim Dream Daddy that people were talking about a few years ago? The one that willfully misunderstands what the term “daddy” means in gay male spaces to write fluffy dad joke-laden romances intended for a presumably not-gay audience? Alois is the spirit of that game personified as an FE character, which is not something I ever would have thought to know that I didn’t want. He’s got some funny lines here and there, but that’s the most you can say about him when otherwise he’s just passable midgame filler (of a unit type each house including the Wolves already has one of) standing in Jeralt’s imitation Greil shadow. I don’t even mind the platonic S support all that much because it’s still only Byleth, but it occurs to me that just about the only thing that would have made Alois memorable would be if his S support was romantic but he remained married to his wife. I can’t think of a time when this series has allowed the player to indulge in adultery, so even if it had been limited to an option for f!Byleth it would have been a fascinating option.

#7 Cyril - This isn’t about his devotion to Rhea, which is fully understandable given his circumstances. Nor is it about his performance as a unit which in my experience at least is actually rather good for a Donnel/Mozu-style villager archetype. No, what gets me is that he’s a self-righteous workaholic which makes for quite the grating personality trait. I understand that he finds meaning in his work and that he’s got some entertaining supports calling other characters to task for their terrible work ethics or ignorance of the lives of commoners (VW should have really dug more into his back-and-forth with Claude), but the lectures on not interrupting him or telling Byleth to get back to work are as tiresome as they are frequent. It’s petty I know, but one can only hope he grows out of it eventually. At least he doesn’t wear a pot on his head....

#6 Mercedes - Like Constance, she’s the type of character I wanted to like from the start. She’s pious pseudo-Catholic clergy, with a quirky thing with ghosts and some quiet lesbianism with her BFF that I can take or leave but that I know some people really enjoy (and also she’s bi-for-Byleth, but no one talks about that). Unfortunately as I touched on when talking about Marianne in my Top 10 characters list, Mercedes’s appealing points are sharply contrasted against her more annoying ones. The breathy voice acting I can mostly get used to, but her backstory is unnecessarily convoluted - three families and two flavors of evil adoptive father - and as is also true of Constance her association with Jeritza drags her down a fair bit. To this day I still have no idea what we’re meant to make of the Lamine siblings’ dynamic, but Mercedes’s eagerness to overlook her brother’s crimes and unrepentant bloodlust so she can coo over what a sweet boy he is deep down say some pretty odd things about her personal moral code. Maybe it was implied all along with the paranormal fascination that she’s not as orthodox as she appears to be, but the dissonance is real especially in CF where she gets a support line with Jeritza that tries to woobify him and affirms how much she loves him...and meanwhile in monastery exploration she’s wringing her hands over how much she hates the idea of fighting Faerghus and the church. There’s no through line here, and as justification for characters siding with Edelgard go this one is pretty flimsy.

#5 Gilbert - Similar to Cyril, I don’t dislike Gilbert for the reasons that most of the fandom does. Yes, he’s a crappy father, but as I’m pretty indifferent to Annette and to father-child bonding in general I can appreciate the fresh spin he places on the archetype of the devoted knight. In short, he’s a knight who wasn’t devoted and ran away from his duty, and his arc in AM is all about making up for his past failures both to his family and to his liege. This is an angle to knighthood FE doesn’t delve into often, and it makes him an explicit foil of Dedue as explored in their supports. The reason that Gilbert is on this list though in fact has more to do with that opposition, because I am painfully aware that had AM not killed off Dedue by default in service of self-insert romance Gilbert would not have had to be scripted as Dedue’s replacement both as a unit and as a retainer figure. It’s not his “fault” of course, insofar as one can ever blame fictional characters for the actions of their writers, but whenever I’m running AM and have to take those randomized supply run quests from Gilbert instead of the route’s actual retainer I’m reminded of how we were robbed of power couple Dimidue (in AM anyway - CF of all routes delivers on this point). Gilbert could have been father of the year to Annette and freely given Byleth his (grand)daddy dick and it still wouldn’t overwrite the fundamental problem that Byleth screwed over all three AM-exclusive characters in different ways. As to that, well...look at #1.

#4 Raphael - It’s hard to describe just how much wasted potential there is to this guy. Along with Ignatz and Leonie he could have illustrated the greater social mobility of the Alliance and the increased opportunities non-nobles enjoy there, but all three are mostly side characters. He’s repeatedly positive in the face of tragedy and remains motivated by his love for his remaining family, but 90% of his dialogue revolves around either eating or training to the point that he’s arguably the closest FE16 comes to gimmick character writing (something almost every FE is guilty of, but that has come under heavy scrutiny in recent years because of how much Awakening and Fates used it). He has a sweet friendship with Ignatz with even a bit of chemistry that sits in good company with the kind of simply affability he has with almost everyone he supports, but they have a no homo ending involving one of the game’s eternally offscreen characters. He supports Dimitri, but the bara content is thin on the ground and their line stands out as easily the least substantial of the house leaders’ cross-house supports. Even as a unit he’s lackluster, in the same repetitive category as Alois with nothing that makes him really stand out from the other axe-and-brawling guys. Highest HP growth in the game...whee. I’ve seen arguments that Raphael’s simplicity is the source of his charm, and while I can sort of see that he feels like he belongs in a game like the GBA or Tellius titles where characters have a much smaller amount of overall content to their name. In a game like Three Houses the sheer torrent of lines about food and training wear thin quickly.

#3 Bernadetta - see #8 here. To sum up, she’s annoying, her sex appeal falls flat with me and is frankly just kind of confusing, it bugs me that a significant portion of the Ferdibert fandom headcanons her as Hubert’s bestie when the man clearly does not do besties, and the most positive thing I can think to say about is that based on her habit of befriending known murderers among other things she might be a bit of a sociopath. That’s not very flattering, but at least it’s somewhat interesting. Oh yeah, and Edelgard setting her on fire at the Gronder rematch is good for a meme although I suppose that isn’t technically attributable to Bernadetta.

#2 Jeritza - Jeritza sucks. Everyone, apart from the small number of fans into Bylitza for some reason, is aware that he sucks. He’s a bloodthirsty serial killer we’re meant to like because he killed his father to protect his sister and also because he likes ice cream and kittens...and because he’s clearly mentally ill in some way and Edelgard is weaponizing his illness for her war which means all the murder is okay, I guess. Jeritza is like FE7 Karel if he was somewhat important to the plot and that instead of a redemption arc between games he got Karla and some other characters swearing that he’s really sweet deep down and also he can romance the male self-insert - yay. I love the line of thinking sometimes espoused in anti circles that M/M Bylitza is the only non-Problematic™ Byleth ship because he’s their only gay romantic S rank partner who’s not one of their students, a loli, or Rhea who is obviously the most evil character in the game. As I’ve mentioned above Jeritza also makes other characters he supports worse by association, although he’s not quite as bad in that regard as #1. Do I even need to bring up the painfully affected voice acting? It’s ironic that the vocal director for the English localization turns in unquestionably the worst performance among the named cast, and I have to assume he picked the role for himself solely because he sounds like an imposing Death Knight and not because his voice is at all suited to the troubled twunk underneath the armor. Just about the only thing that would have salvaged Jeritza for me would be if he and Hubert got to have an epic competition to determine once and for all which of them is more evil. Hubert would wipe the floor with this poser.

#1 Byleth - see here at the bottom. They fail as a self-insert, they fail to be a properly realized character even more than previous Avatars, they damage other characterizations and arcs all over the place, and Three Houses overall would have been vastly improved if they didn’t exist or at least weren’t the PoV character. In that previous post I listed just two reasons why I still prefer Byleth to Robin as an Avatar, one being that their significance to the plot is set up before the game even begins and the other being that their lack of a voice makes f!Byleth a less obtrusive presence when it came time for me to have her S rank all the guys to fill out the support log...not enough to where I could treat her as a self-insert, but any amount helps. I do however have to add a third small bit of praise for Byleth, in that they apparently drive antis up the wall for the most asinine of reasons which is always entertaining to witness. I recall when this game’s school setting was first revealed that everyone in the fandom nodded their heads and made the easy prediction that there would be teacher/student sex because that’s just how FE rolls, but somehow still there’s outrage over it. Even so, Byleth is horrible by every significant parameter, and it’s a shame we’ll only be able to imagine what FE16 would have been like had the developers not felt the need to write the whole thing around an Avatar.

#Fire Emblem #FE16 #Fire Emblem Three Houses

[irandrura]

Now, just for fun, I’m going to list everyone I recruited and give some brief thoughts on each one. If I spend more time on a person, it’s because I found them more interesting, or did more supports, or the like.

I did go a bit overboard recruiting people, but I feel validated by that decision considering the number of people I might have had to kill otherwise. As it is I only had to kill two people I didn’t want to – Lorenz and Caspar; Linhardt also appeared but I was able to avoid him – and while I’m sad, especially since I should have gotten Caspar for the paralogue with Mercedes and the Death Knight, it could have been a lot worse.

I will, however, skip the four DLC kids, since apparently you need to start their supports in White Clouds, I missed them, and didn’t feel like going back. So I don’t have the content there.

Here we go:

Byleth: I covered some of my thoughts on him in the post on Jeralt. I wouldn’t say that I dislike Byleth as such, but because Byleth has no dialogue and has few definite character traits beyond “doesn’t show emotion much” and maybe “likes being a teacher”, there isn’t much to work with. I suppose I find Byleth a serviceable enough player avatar protagonist, but if I were writing fan fiction or anything, I think I would need to work hard to develop a memorable personality for Byleth. As it is, Byleth only works because you imagine yourself in his or her shoes.

Sothis: I was originally quite worried about Sothis, since I thought she might be too sexualised. Fire Emblem has a bit of a tradition of uncomfortable loli characters, but fortunately in the game itself Sothis was not that bad, and definitely walks back the creepiness level from someone like Nowi. Instead it felt a bit more like Byleth was playing the same role as Micaiah, with a child-like fragment of the goddess accompanying him. I suspect other routes do more with Sothis, though, because on this route, you could probably cut Sothis from the game entirely without losing much. Azure Moon seems to be the route that is least interested in the history of the goddess, so I should not judge too prematurely.

Dimitri: The hero of this route, even if he sometimes feels like an anti-hero, or even just a psychotic maniac we unfortunately have to deal with. Of the three house leaders, I think it’s fair to say that Dimitri looks the most like a traditional FE protagonist, but as it shakes out, he might be one of the least. He seems to be quite straitlaced, reliable, and even bland at the start, but a lot of that turns out to be a cover and he goes on a real emotional journey, I suspect to a much greater extent than the other two. I do think his emotional arc goes a bit too fast and the game should have spent more time on it, but it was still a good idea, and I genuinely appreciate just how messed up and traumatised Dimitri is. He has issues, he suffers, he runs off into the wilderness and talks to ghosts, but I like it. I feel like he validates the idea that it’s okay to not have everything together. For him, overcoming his demons was the real triumph, and defeating the Empire was just a coda.

Dedue: He reminds me quite a bit of the Tellius games, with their overall subtheme of selfless service and lord/vassal relationships. Like Dimitri, he has issues, but because he’s such a quiet and reserved person, it can be easy to miss them. I suspect he’s a very easy character to misinterpret as well, both IC and OOC, where the temptation for Westerners to interpret him in terms of contemporary racial politics is going to cause problems. But ultimately I quite liked him, and felt that his faithful service really ennobles the person he serves. My one concern or regret around Dedue is that he isn’t present during the period of Dimitri’s madness, so we never get to see how his dedication to his lord might be tested. Would he enable or even encourage Dimitri’s instability? On the other hand, it seems like the belief that Dedue was dead was a major contributor to Dimitri’s madness in the first place, so perhaps if he’d been around, he would have held his friend back from the brink.

Felix: I like that Felix never stops entirely being an asshole. As time goes by his abrasiveness seems less important, and you get a better understanding of why he feels the way he does, but he’s still a bit of a jerk even to the very end, and that’s part of who he is. I also appreciate that he plays a useful role in being the only Blue Lion who actively dislikes knights and chivalry, so he’s important for the way he can provoke the others into justifying themselves. After all, the Blue Lions are a bit of a knight fan club, and he provides some contrast. Nonetheless, for all his scowling, he is a faithful retainer and can be relied on.

Ashe: He’s just a sweetheart, really. A commoner background contrasts nicely with the others, his lockpicking skill is useful, and he’s just generally very genuine and kind. Plus his appearance and voice-acting sell that he’s a bit younger than the others and on the callow side. I feel like he’s one of the characters who grows most in overall maturity, and his journey towards knighthood is probably the longest. He was a character I relied on a lot and I never got tired of him taking down the boss with a single arrow from halfway across the map. In my playthrough he ended up together with Petra and I am sure the knightly order they create will go on to be fantastic.

Sylvain: I’m a little confused by Sylvain. Early on it seems like he irrepressibly flirts with every girl he sees and always gets dumped, but later on, in part two, he clarifies that girls constantly flirt with him because they want to marry into a bloodline with a crest. It seems like it can’t be both ways? I suppose the best reading might be that Sylvain constantly flirts with strangers, who don’t know his heritage or his crest, while rejecting advances from people who do know about them, because what he really wants is someone who loves him as a person, not as a mere opportunity to increase in social status. For someone who seems so cheery and laid-back on the outside, he actually has some real problems beneath it all. That said, at times I was a bit suspicious of the translation: there are a few opportunities to call him a jerk, and I wonder if those were added, since otherwise his flirting seems like it’s presented as harmless, fun, or even a charming character quirk.

Mercedes: I didn’t think a whole lot of Mercedes at first: the caring healer character appears in a lot of FE games, she didn’t seem to put much of a twist on it, and I found her voice acting a little stilted at first. I suppose, to be fair, a soon-to-be-ordained friend of mine has a similar cadence, so it’s possible, but it did throw me off a little. For the most part I found Mercedes very reliable and my primary healer/mage, but I think a more full judgement of her character will need to wait until I do her paralogue with Caspar. Her family background and relationship with the Death Knight seem key to understanding her.

Annette: The translators and voice actor were clearly having fun with her dorky improvised songs, and I love them. They’re great. That said, Annette didn’t really come alive for me as a character until she got to interact with Gilbert. He’s probably a more interesting character than she is, really, but their relationship is what makes them both start to stand out. Overall I find her likeable and reliable, but, Gilbert aside, not one of the most fascinating characters on the roster.

Ingrid: Again, a quite straightforward character in many ways. She wants to be a knight. She trains hard. She becomes a knight. Okay. I did find it a bit odd that even at the end of the game she still talks about wanting to be a knight, even though she’s spent the last few missions entirely in the Falcon Knight and Holy Knight classes, has battled across the continent at the side of her liege, and has defeated countless enemy champions. Eventually I wanted to ask her, “What more could you possibly need to do before you’re a knight?” There is some drama around marriage and social expectations for her as well, and it surprised me that it took her so long to figure out that she could be a knight and serve her family. Her family don’t want a political alliance through marriage or anything: it is specifically money and resources that they need. Knighthood seems like a career that can bring you great wealth – plunder, ransoms, tournament rewards, etc. – so it seems like knighthood, no less than marriage to a wealthy noble after a crest, could be a path to restoring her family’s fortunes. (Also, she was the one I S-supported, so I suppose the marriage plan worked out anyway. *shrug*)

Ferdinand: Everything about him is laser-focused on this question of, “What is nobility?” At times it got a bit tedious, and I wanted him to just shut up about being a noble for five minutes. However, while he laid it on a bit thick sometimes, what I like about him is the way that his character development seems like it could really change based on which route he ends up in. After Edelgard declares war and dispossesses his father, he has a really interesting choice to make: take up arms against her and join the resistance, or accept her offer of rank and power in the Empire. Since I recruited him at the very last minute, in the last month before the assault on the monastery, I might have imagined him struggling with that choice, and I like to picture him debating the importance of visible rank and status to the nobility that he tries so hard to achieve. I could easily imagine him going either way on that choice, believing in Edelgard’s vision or passionately warring against it, and that to me made him much more interesting.

Bernadetta: Her voice actor was clearly having a ton of fun. The energy she brought to the role made the character very entertaining to listen to. That said, I feel bad for her: her extreme social anxiety is sometimes played for laughs, but knowing that it’s the result of an abusive childhood makes it quite a bit less funny. Oddly my favourite support with her was Bernadetta/Sylvain, mainly because of the supports that I saw, he was the only one who made a serious attempt to respect her boundaries and to communicate with her in a way she would find comfortable. Seriously, writing her a letter and tucking it into a book was quite clever and sensitive of him... even if he ruined it by just walking up afterwards and saying hello.

Dorothea: Judging from the online stats the game showed on loading screens, Dorothea must be one of the most popular characters in the game, and was deployed almost every mission. This makes it a bit awkward that I never really deployed her at all, or focused much on her. I don’t have anything against her, and she seems interesting enough, but I suppose I already had enough mages and other people were higher priority. Oh dear. Maybe next time. She seems to be a popular choice for the dancer class, but since I made Marianne my dancer…

Petra: On the other hand, I did like Petra a lot, built her as an assassin, and got a lot of use from her. I wonder what her odd speech pattern is in Japanese? Looks like in Japanese she misunderstands idioms, rather than misuses the present continuous tense. At any rate, I really like the role Petra plays in worldbuilding, since her status as an outsider taken to the empire to be educated as a hostage serves to characterise both Brigid and the empire itself. Like Ferdinand, I also think she’s in a fascinating position where she could plausibly end up either pro- or anti-empire. I enjoyed being able to fight for freedom and self-determination, but I could also see her buying into Edelgard’s vision of a reformed empire. That sort of flexibility seems really valuable in a game with different routes like this.

Raphael: Unfortunately another character I recruited only at the last minute and didn’t get to spend that much time with. The fact that I avoided brawlers probably didn’t help. However, from what I did see, I liked that they included a character who genuinely struggles with his studies, and I also thought it interesting that he presents yet another character who wants to be a knight, but for a totally different reason. Ashe has a romantic view of knighthood; Ingrid has a relatively romantic view as well but also thinks of fighting for her ideals; Felix outright hates knighthood and chivalry as a bunch of lies. In contrast, Raphael’s pragmatism is a little refreshing. He just wants to support his family, given his strength fighting seems like a good way to do it, and knighthood promises more stability than mercenary work. Good for him.

Ignatz: And yet another character thinking about knighthood, albeit again for a different reason. He doesn’t want to be a knight as such, but has to because it’s his duty. At times even I got a bit sick of the game constantly talking about knighthood, but the wide range of opinions on it was definitely a good thing. Alas, all Ignatz wants to do is paint and worship the goddess. Sadly I used Ashe as my main archer, so I didn’t see as much of Ignatz as I might have liked. Another playthrough, then.

Lysithea: See above, really. I get the impression she’s a quite popular character, but as with Dorothea, I already had a few mages and didn’t have much need for her. I’m guessing she would have a lot more importance on a route where her backstory with what are presumably creepy Slitherer magical experiments is more relevant? As it is, sorry, I just didn’t see that much. Young, likes sweets, ambitious in order to help her family because she hasn’t got long to live… but that’s about all I got.

Marianne: On the other hand, I did use Marianne quite extensively. She was my backup healer after Mercedes, and she was my dancer, so she was very useful. (Some might say it was cruel to make her dance in public: I thought it might help build her confidence!) Her paralogue also stood out to me as one of the most interesting and fun. At first I thought her self-loathing might be irrational or a symptom of depression, but it turns out that she actually has quite an understandable reason for thinking that she’s awful and that no one should  ever get close to her. Bringing peace to her ancestor and giving her the opportunity to increase her confidence and bloom as a person was very heartwarming. Her character arc gave me some WAFFy feelings, and I enjoy that sometimes.

Leonie: It’s weird to me that a character defined by her relationship with Jeralt, the player’s father, is so easy to miss recruiting. Nonetheless I did pick her up, because I love cavaliers and use far too many of them. Still, most of the other cavaliers were nobles, which made Leonie’s role as a mercenary knight a nice change. I think it might have worked better, though, if I’d known a bit more about the role of mercenaries in Fódlan. Are there mercenary companies? How do they usually find work? It would have been nice to know a bit more about the world that Byleth supposedly comes from, and which Leonie is so keen to break into.

Seteth: I was not a big fan of Seteth at first, but he grew on me, which surprises me particularly since I was on a route that never actually explains what his deal is. I feel like every long-term series fan, on meeting Seteth and Flayn, must have gone “oh they’re dragons”, because they fit that archetype just so closely, but somehow I got through the entire arc without anyone figuring it out. Nonetheless, while he starts off as quite suspicious of you, and even hostile, I enjoyed how further supports gradually humanised him. Seteth/Felix or Seteth/Ingrid, for instance, stood out to me as nice: the older man going out of his way to give practical advice to someone who’s still sorting himself or herself out. He’s a good mentor. I know often the thing people remember about Fire Emblem is the young protagonists and the shipping and so on, but sometimes it’s the older, more mature characters that I find the most interesting.

Flayn: In contrast, I did not find Flayn as interesting as Seteth. She’s a nice enough person, and the enthusiasm of the Flayn/Dedue support was cute, but ultimately I didn’t see that much of her. Mercedes and Marianne were my primary healers, and Byleth had a high Faith skill as well, so I didn’t need another one and didn’t take her along that often. I hope there are more depths, because as it is, I wasn’t that struck by her.

Hanneman: Another character I generally did not take along, so most of what I learned about Hanneman was around crests and his scientific curiosity. I think Hanneman supports my previous speculation that Fódlan might be starting on an intellectual renaissance at the time of the game. He is the Father of Crestology, even though crests have been known for a thousand years. That suggests that the organised, academic study of such matters is in its infancy.

Manuela: Again, not someone I looked at too closely, and her most obvious character trait, her romantic loneliness, could be a little bit cringeworthy at times. I would have to do more supports and look more closely at her to form a stronger opinion. The parts that I found most interesting with regard to her were about her history with the opera. Her relationship with Dorothea seems like it might reveal some more about both of them, but alas I didn’t use each character much.

Gilbert: On the other hand, I did use Gilbert quite a lot, since Dedue went missing for a while and I needed a substitute tank. Gilbert is clearly a loyal man who has suffered an immense amount, especially under the weight of guilt and self-doubt. It’s striking that he abandoned his family and homeland and fled to the church in order to assuage the weight of guilt he felt for the king’s death; but in the end the separation from his family only intensified feelings of guilt and unworthiness. Nonetheless, despite being a man who’s really screwed quite a lot up, he stoically tries to coordinate the Faerghus war effort, even when Dimitri is in his worst state. I was very glad to eventually get the Annette/Gilbert paired ending, as a valuable reminder that even at Gilbert’s age, it is possible to start healing and putting your life back together.

Alois: I really only got the Byleth support with Alois, so I don’t have that much to say. His cheery optimism is a nice change after a lot of the other faculty and knights are either serious or sad, and I enjoy horrible puns as much as the next man, but I think I need to see more.

Catherine: Speaking of cheery knights, Catherine’s rough-and-tumble confidence is also pretty appealing. Unlike the students, Catherine is strong and she knows that she’s strong, with a confidence that comes of years of fighting. What I saw of her personality I generally liked, and I learned a bit about her history, but I’m going to hold off on any further comments until I get some more context for her and Rhea. She is obviously incredibly devoted to the archbishop who saved her life, and in some ways seems to have reinvented her life from who she was before (cf. Dedue, the loyal service theme again), but I think I should need to see a route where Rhea plays a larger role before I come to conclusions.

Shamir: I like Shamir quite a lot, and she might be my favourite of the knights, even though she doesn’t have much to do with the actual plot. Her outsider status is the most striking thing about her: unlike pretty much everyone else, she has no personal investment in Fódlan or its politics, which frees her to focus on the needs of the moment. I would like to know a bit more about Dagda and Brigid, to be honest, but I suspect I’ve seen all there is to see already...

Cyril: Unfortunately I never used him. I can tell that he’s the Est of the game, a young character who probably has excellent growths and can excel in any class, but my roster felt pretty complete by the time I got him, he didn’t seem like he had interesting relationships with other characters that I might want to explore, and he’s so young that I feel uncomfortable making him a soldier. I can completely accept that there might be really good material around him, perhaps especially on the Golden Deer route where Almyra might come up, but as it is I don’t know any of it.

Anna: Yep, she’s Anna. Not much to say. Anna is always the same character, and Fódlan’s Anna doesn’t seem particularly special or unique.

 …phew, that took much longer than I thought. These games and their giant casts, man.

[butwhatifidothis]

I disagree on the "crimson flower was obviously intended to be the villain route!" takes. Bernadetta actually leaves her room and stops being afraid at the monestary and has character growth that isn't negative (for reasons??? I guess bernadetta just has a lust for blood and conquest or some shit). Despite the enemy characters calling the player out, the only characters who ACTUALLY bail on you for deciding to join Edelgard are Catherine, Cyril, Gilbert, Flayn, Seteth, Dedue, and Hilda (though she originally WAS able to join you on CF???)

Don't forget, CF is also where you can recruit characters despite the motivations for joining edelgard not making sense. Fact of the matter is a majority of the students are cool with treason and imperialism because "something something, crests and nobles bad!" and "I like my teacher. They're cool/hot!".

Maybe in the beginning it was intended to be a purely evil bad ending, but it feels like halfway through they went "wait we dont want edelgard to be a *bad* guy! Lets make her morally grey by giving her sympathetic/relatable traits and making the church suspicious and potentially bad/morally grey by having rhea go insane and set an entire city on fire!!!" and then dropped the ball on everything that could have made edelgard morally grey and instead just made her "An incompetent villain protagonist who acts like waifu bait".

Then again, 3H is just inconsistant as hell when it comes to characters and the different routes they can be recruited on.

Bernadetta actually leaves her room and stops being afraid at the monestary and has character growth that isn't negative (for reasons??? I guess bernadetta just has a lust for blood and conquest or some shit).

Well, she is still afraid though. Like, look at what she says:

The idea of dying alone in her room with no one ever finding her is the only reason she felt motivated to get out of it. And given that she feels that way because of the war Edelgard started, this really isn't as good a thing that I've seen people try to make it out to be, imo. She goes from being a recluse due to the fear of everyone around her to being so afraid of a lonely death that she forces herself out her room - oh boy, so much better :/

Despite the enemy characters calling the player out, the only characters who ACTUALLY bail on you for deciding to join Edelgard are Catherine, Cyril, Gilbert, Flayn, Seteth, Dedue, and Hilda (though she originally WAS able to join you on CF???)

Sure, but the fact that Cyril, Catherine, Flayn, Seteth, and Hilda do defect when they don't on any other route is still a very concerning sign. Most of these you might could explain with "they're loyal to Rhea, of course they wouldn't fight her," but Hilda is never stated to be particularly close to either Rhea specifically or the Seiros faith as a whole, so her being among the ones who won't join CF is... not the best look. On top of that, it can pretty easily be argued that even most of the characters who can be recruited/default to CF (if CF is chosen) go through noticeable character regression doing so.

Don't forget, CF is also where you can recruit characters despite the motivations for joining edelgard not making sense. Fact of the matter is a majority of the students are cool with treason and imperialism because "something something, crests and nobles bad!" and "I like my teacher. They're cool/hot!".

It's more that, the same way Byleth is continuing to put their trust in Edelgard despite all of the warning signs telling them not to, the students are continuing to put their faith in Byleth despite them joining someone who's just revealed themselves to be far more villainous than anyone suspected. CF is all about never questioning oneself and living in ignorance, which is what everyone either does or is eventually encouraged to do on CF.

Maybe in the beginning it was intended to be a purely evil bad ending, but it feels like halfway through they went "wait we dont want edelgard to be a *bad* guy! Lets make her morally grey by giving her sympathetic/relatable traits and making the church suspicious and potentially bad/morally grey by having rhea go insane and set an entire city on fire!!!"

It still is a bad end. Fodlan, even with all the sympathy given to Edelgard, still gets thrown into tyranny by her rule. She’s still the villain, she just won. She definitely was fluffed up with waifu bait though lol

The Church being suspicious is always meant to be a red herring to cover up Edelgard’s evil deeds, and it never being revealed as such in CF is adding onto its theme of ignorance. Looking at the larger picture, it’s meant to make Edelgard look more villainous, not less.

and then dropped the ball on everything that could have made edelgard morally grey

Edelgard’s not really that morally grey; she commits very evil acts for mostly selfish reasons, and that is consistent across all four routes. Rhea and Dimitri are the ones with moral greyness to them, doing questionable acts for genuinely good intentions, while Edelgard does her acts with domination and power in mind (as imperialism is her direct goal in instigating the war).

and instead just made her "An incompetent villain protagonist who acts like waifu bait".

I wouldn’t call her incompetent per se. In three out of four routes, she dominates Fodlan, having Faerghus on the constant backfoot, the Church completely scattered, and the Alliance close to shambles. In her route, she gets what she wants, which is complete Imperial control over Fodlan and with religion playing a far more middling role in the people’s lives (no matter how important it was to them). In CF, she succeeds in convincing Byleth - a person with godly powers - to help her in her conquest against all rational thought. While arrogance and incompetency are far from mutually exclusive, her only real big mistake was letting TWS get with as much as she did. They only retaliate back against her after gaining Relics - something she permitted - for example. She fucked up with them, but otherwise? She (and Hubert let’s be real lol) could’ve done a worse job. She has her dumb moments, but overall she’s still a force to reckon with, which wouldn’t be the case if she were full-on incompetent.

Then again, 3H is just inconsistant as hell when it comes to characters and the different routes they can be recruited on.

They definitely should have been either more restrictive or more blatant with the negative character growth, to be sure. Like I do a lot lol it can be argued it wasn’t completely bad, but more work coulda been put to it for sure

#ask #anon #exqueuese me princess #Anti-edelgard #anti edelgard #just to be safe #hope I wasn't too mean!! I just disagree lol

[extremepineapple2]

(very long, sorry) I personally dont like Edelgard (pre-relase she reminded me of Mitsuru from P3, one of my favorite characters of all time, and boy was I dissapointed in her when the game came out), I just find her too arrogant and unsympathetic in her treatment of anyone that isn't Byleth. Even in CF, which is supposed to be her as her best self, she's still so inherently dismissive and nonchalant about her supposed 'comrades' (1/7)

and it gives off a wibe that she honestly thinks she’s too good for anyone but the player slash Byleth. This is a direct quote from her B support: “Because of you, I feel I can walk my fated path without losing myself. If I were alone, I might have lost perspective and become a harsh ruler with a heart of ice.” Even if you don’t pick CF, its still very possible that, outside of Silver Snow, she has a group of people that honestly care and fight for her, yet without Byleth she’s ‘alone’. (2/7)      

Without Byleth, she becomes an evil tyrant. Even if she has Hubert, that she has known since childhood, or Ferdinand, that has done his best since academy days to challenge her and try to make her the best person she can be, or Dorothea, or Petra, or Bernadetta, or anyone else, they’re just not good enough for her. She keeps lamenting about how lonely she is, but its not like she doesn’t have people that try and reach out for her. (3/7)             

Its Edelgard herself that wont accept anyone other than the player slash Byleth as her emotional support. Yes, she’s supposed to have trust issues due to trauma, but I’m not sold on the idea that she immidietly fixates on Byleth as the one person she can trust considering that in two out of four routes they can have litteraly zero interactions outside of maybe two cutscenes. And even in the Black Eagles pre timeskip, for someone thats supposed to have such problem with trust, (4/7)      

she sure immidietly opens up to Byleth about her past torture hah.  And in CF, where I expected some sort of character growth and her opening up to others about her past and TWSITD, the only person she ever openes up to is STILL Byleth. The only person outside of her and Hubert that get to know about TWSITD is Byleth. The only people that get to know about the torture and experiments she went through is Byleth (even with a recrutied Lysitha, and I find it frankly horrible that (5/7)            

Edelgard would use Lysithea in her war knowing full well Lysithea was experimented on by TWSITD. Edelgard full on has Lysethia further the goal of the very people that murdered her siblings and shortened her lifespan without her knowledge like what the fuck). The only person that gets to know the truth about Arianrhod is Byleth, etc etc.I don’t think they intended to have Edelgard come off as taking everyone but Byleth for granted, but to me it just looks like the entirety of CF (6/7)             

is pandering to the importance of the player at the expense of Edelgards possible character growth and relationship with other characters. (7/7)  

Doesn’t surprise Edelgard initially reminded you of Mitsuru. They either have similar voices or the same voice actress (I haven’t checked - but her voice does sound similar to Mitsuru’s). I can definitely understand that being disappointed that Edelgard wasn’t more like Mitsuru in actuality. Aside from a few surface traits they are very different.

The bond between Byleth and Edelgard was done pretty poorly - the very first support with her has her open up with you about her trauma when by her own words, she hasn’t told anyone else. Edelgard has only known Byleth for a few months at most at that point. She even acknowledged that her trusting you with this information is weird (”I suppose there’s something in the air tonight”). No reason given for why you trusts the mysterious professor instead of her allies who have known her for longer. She doesn’t even mention you saving her as a reason.

One of the ways they tried to differentiate Edelgard from the other Lords is that she doesn’t trust people and yet she trusts you in the first support conversation… for some reason.

Not only does she begin to tell you your past in the first support, the first support ended with her telling you to forget what she told you but then in the second support she continues to tell you your past without you even asking. What?

Now Dimitri telling Byleth some of his past in the first support conversation? Absolutely fine. Dimitri’s character flaw is set up to be him placing his trust too much into people. He also tells OTHER people besides Byleth about his path. Byleth isn’t the nexus of Dimitri’s universe like Byleth is to Edelgard’s.

I do fully agree that they made Edelgard worship the player to the detriment of the story and characters.

#Anonymous #edelgard critical #fire emblem spoilers #fire emblem three houses spoilers #spoilers #ask #text

[senpai-no-lie]

Blue Lions Route

So I finished the Blue Lions Route! 

Why I chose Blue Lions: Okay, so when the first trailer was dropped, I thought Edelgard would be my favorite. I liked her character design and I just thought she was really pretty, but Dimitri was on my radar because lol they named a FE character after my chinchilla, nice. I ended up picking Dimitri, because what I knew about his character arc appealed to my sensibilities and I thought he was the nicest during the House introductions, talking about his classmates.

Who Was My Dancer: Felix. I thought he looked cute in the outfit, had the potential for magic anyway as well as swords, and had the avoidance to not be nuked by enemies with his pitiful defense/resistance. He made a great dancer! From my understanding, it might’ve been a bit of a waste, because of gambits, but I didn’t really understand them or use them much in this playthrough

What Paired Endings Did I Get:  

Petra & Linhardt 

 Ralpheal & Ignatz 

 Dorothea & Manuela 

Dedue & Flayn (this one really surprised me) 

 Annette & Mercedea

 Shamir & Catherine 

 Lysithea & Cyril

 Lorenz & Leonie (a bit miffed about this one, but it’s what I get for choosing to go for Seteth with Ingrid instead of with Leonie)

 Ingrid & Seteth 

 Ferdinand & Marianne 

 Felix & Sylvain 

 Ashe & Caspar

Who Did Byleth Marry: Dimitri... not so much because I ship them as characters as I just liked Dimitri the best. Don’t @ me 

Which Dimitri Do I prefer?: Pre-timeskip! I wasn’t a super fan of either character design at first, but I just do not enjoy how self-loathing and mean Dimitri was for a good chunk of the timeskip. I feel like the fandom calling that “feral Dimitri” is a bit of a misnomer. When he returns to being is usual self, it was a welcome change

General Thoughts: I liked the route! It was a good-enough personal arc for Dimitri to keep me engaged, despite some of the mechanics getting in the way of the story. I wish Dedue had been more important to the post-timeskip portion. Mostly, though, I was surprised how short the route was; I’m used to 28ish chapters, so I’m a bit nervous to see how long Crimson Flowers is if that’s the shortest route. I liked all my house characters and had a good time. 

The Blue Lions Characters: 

Dimitri: I think he’s probably the most well-developed, consistently done character in the entire game. I love his character, his supports, and his empathy. There have been a lot of other people who’ve done a great job analyzing his character, so I won’t bother, but A+ boi

Dedue: I like Dedue and his role as Dimitri’s retainer, but he’s not particularly appealing to me. In general, I don’t like the gap moe that comes with strong, silent types that have a feminine side. I think he was a bit of an improvement from Benny (who I liked but didn’t pay much attention to), and I was so grateful to make him not a Fortress Knight (War Master or whatever Dedue did a lot of good punching) because that is probably my least favorite unit type.

Felix: I had a good idea I’d like Felix, because I tend to like tsunderes regardless of gender, but from how the fandom memes about him, I was surprised by the depths of my fondness. He often gets labelled as an asshole, but I would be more generous and say he’s merely got an abrasive side, like a sponge. He had some good, cute moments in his supports and I think his presence added to the story of Azure Moon. I also like that he’s like the only character that has different endings if you recruit him to a different route.  

Sylvain: I know he can be a bit of a controversial character because of his playboy ways, but I like him! I like horse-mounted units and units that can use magic, so he was gonna be a winner for me. I also understand why some people don’t like him and find him to be sexist, but he didn’t particularly read that way to me. To be fair, I find Sylvain’s backstory to be relatable because I myself have a similar situation, of sorts, with my older brother, so I’m just inclined to be more lenient about his more negative traits. I think it hurts Sylvain’s likability that some (or maybe all) of his supports aren’t pre-timeskip locked to demonstrate he really does change his ways, but I think his supports are good and that he’s never irredeemably awful to anyone. 

Ingrid: Another hot take: Ingrid is probably my favorite BL girl lol. I think she’s cute, she’s got some gap moe to her with being so stern but also a food-loving goober and super excitable about knight stuff. My friend said she never was able to get Ingrid to be usable, but my Ingrid rocked. I feel like she had the most connections to the story of BL of the girls, and I wish they had used her more. 

Ashe: It’s a toss-up whether he’s my second fav or Felix is, but I love Ashe. I’m pretty pro archer characters (sans Bernadetta), but Ashe is also just so sweet and caring, despite some of the things he’s been through. I think he’s very cute and a great unit. I might end up marrying him to Byleth if I playthrough BL again (which I will to get DLC supports)

Annette: I like her, but I don’t think she really stands out. I feel sorry that she has to deal with Gilbert, but honestly you could erase Annette from the main story and it wouldn’t change a thing, sadly. I think she’s cute and quirky and I like her spunk, but there’s really not too much to say about her.

Mercedes: I love Mercedes, but similarly to Annette, she doesn’t add as much to the storyline as I’d like, outside of the thing with the Death Knight, which is almost a footnote tbh. I like her character design and her supports and she’s an all-around great unit and character. 

Gilbert: Ugh, I spent a lot of my time complaining about what a whiner he is. As I mentioned, not a fan of Fortress Knights, and Gilbert not only had a base speed of 2 but would regularly miss with an 70-80% hit rate. As a character, I thought he had some good supports, but in general I hate that Dedue took a backseat to him, and that Gilbert is a horrible father. I view as Gilbert a good model for Dimitri, in that Dimitri should not follow Gilbert’s example in how to express and process grief and guilt. Another reason I dislike Gilbert is that I got locked out of his support chain with Catherine, and that’s just annoying

Technically, since I’ve recruited every character except Claude, Edelgard, and Hubert (and I guess the DLC, but now I’ve unlocked them) and almost every associated support, I could write out my thoughts on them, but I’ll save that for the appropriate routes. 

Assorted Bulleted Thoughts: 

Hubert: Man, he just popped up as a cartoonish villain to defeat all the time, and I digged it haha. It became tradition to have Ingrid fly in and to kill him in one hit without taking any damage. It was great. I felt bad that Edelgard had Not A Word to say about Hubert’s death. 

Edelgard: She was built-up so much as the person that had to be defeated to end the war, but there was a lot of dicking around (and all the time we had to go back to homebase for long periods of time) that Edelgard didn’t really get the time to flesh her out as an antagonist or make me, the player, feel particularly motivated to defeat her. Especially when you learn she apparently had nothing to do with the Tragedy of Duscur, and Dimitri is pretty lukewarm about having to kill his stepsister, once he clears his head. Though, that final animated cutscene was top tier

Rhea: I think there should have been one chapter either before or after fighting Edelgard where you rescue Rhea, because as it is, the way her return is handled is incredibly sloppy and emotionally dead. Not even a scene where Flayn and Seteth greet her. Lame

Marianne: She was my favorite and first recruited unit. Love her. That’s all 

I wish all the Blue Lions had been able to reach A-support with each other, especially Sylvain. I think there woul’ve been a lot he could have gained as a character especially. 

It is dumb as hell male Byleth can’t S-support Dimitri, or any of the male Blue Lions, for that matter. If you could add one male student from GD and BL to be bi, I would’ve picked Dimitri or Ashe from BL. Everyone in GD is pretty hetero, so I will arbitrarily choose Ignatz 

#fire emblem #fire emblem three houses #fire emblem 3h #fe 3h #fire emblem azure moon #my opinions about fire emblem

[larena]

Azure Moon and Women

I've been thinking a lot about how much the Azure Moon (Blue Lions) path of Fire Emblem Three Houses really failed to grab me, and why that might have been. There are, I think a number of reasons: I didn't connect emotionally to Dimitri, I don't like the Kingdom as a body of governance, and I played it after Crimson Flowers (Black Eagles) as my first playthrough which made it very hard to distance myself from my sympathies for Edelgard and her cause.

But I think a lot of my inability to connect to the plot of Azure Moon is actually that I don't think it does women very well.

We start with the fact that there are only three women in the house by default compared to the other houses' four, I played Female Byleth so that's four women total in the core cast. Obviously Flayn joins later as she always does, you can optionally recruit Manuela, Shamir, and Catherine, and any other female students you want. But their role in the narrative is limited.

Then, all the characters exclusive to Blue Lions: Dedue, Gilbert, and obviously Dimitri, are men. As well, the sole major supporting NPC, Rodrigue, is also a man.

So the gender ratio is already off. This will always be a mark against something for me, but it can be mitigated somewhat if female characters are given a lot to do and have deep characterization. And while the latter is true, I think, for every character in Three Houses, the former... Kinda isn't for the female character of the Blue Lions.

Obviously all of them are playable, so they do by the strictest definition *do* a lot, at least if the player allows them to. But within the core narrative... None of them truly contribute much.

Mercedes has an entire arc with the Death Knight, her brother, but it relies on completing a Paralogue that you have to recruit another man to unlock. That entire part of her character can optionally be completely unresolved. Annette has her relationship with Gilbert which is well-written and important to a greater metanarrative, but is also optional as it is mostly contained to their support chain. Ingrid, one of Dimitri's closest friends, doesn't do anything to help with his mental state besides be part of the peanut gallery, and occasionally express concerns to Byleth. None of them move the core plot of the route forward.

Granted, all of this is the way that it is because these characters can die, and so the story must not hinge on their involvement. The same is true of most of the male characters besides Gilbert. But then, they should have done more to make sure that there was a female presence in the narrative regardless of character death. Nothing mandated Gilbert or Rodrigue or even Dimitri be men.

The one case of a woman in the core cast who cannot be removed from the story is Byleth, if female. This is also not ideal because she can be a man. And her role becomes even more frustrating if she *is* female.

Much of Azure Moon revolves around Dimitri's breakdown and fragile mental state due to his trauma and feeling of betrayal from Edelgard. Most of the characters around Dimitri... Don't do anything to help him, really. Most of the rest of the Blue Lions can't do much because they may all be dead, Gilbert and Rodrigue don't do much because they are frustratingly loyal to Dimitri as the heir to the throne, and don't deign to go against any of his decisions, and Dedue *may* help somewhat, if he lives, but in a scene that is optional and is not reflected on very much in the succeeding narrative.

So we're left with Byleth, who is a largely silent protagonist, but does have personality and does take actions without player input. And if Byleth is a female character her actions regarding Dimitri become a problematic trope.

Byleth in Azure Moon cares deeply for Dimitri, regardless of player input. She wants to help him and is always there to be his emotional support. Which becomes frustrating when she is a woman who is, essentially, allowing a man to consistently verbally abuse her, in addition to a consistent threat of physical violence from him. She is a woman who exists almost entirely to be a sounding board for a violent man to work through his issues. Because that's really all a man needs, ultimately, a good woman to just be there for him.

The player is never given the opportunity, as Byleth, to push back against anything Dimitri says or does. The only options ever presented are understanding or silence. Even when Dimitri is telling Byleth that he will use her and her friends as instruments of war with no care for their wellbeing, Byleth *must* care about his.

Granted, all of this is exactly the same regardless of Byleth's gender, but if Byleth is a man, then it isn't better that the only roles this route can envision for women are side characters

Or villains. Azure Moon is the route that features Edelgard the most in her role as villain. In addition, it also features two other female villains in Cornelia and Fleche.

Cornelia is... Two-dimensional and shitty. She's a sexy woman who manipulates people and uses her position to only benefit herself. A deeply problematic trope that I don't think I need to discuss more?

Fleche meanwhile... Is a young girl, who (fairly) wants revenge against Dimitri for her brother's murder (so already her motivations revolve entirely around men) and when she finally makes her move to claim that revenge, it isn't tragic, the narrative does not care that she fails, it only cares that in her failure she killed Rodrigue instead.

Fleche's entire role in the story may as well have been fulfilled by a nameless enemy soldier, she is never mentioned again, even in the following scene where Dimitri starts to recover from his violent fugue, the focus is entirely on Rodrigue's death. Byleth strikes Fleche down without any input from the player. The player character of this game *kills a child* for wanting to avenge her brother, to protect a man who's killed ten times as many as she possibly could have. And it's brushed past.

Then there's Edelgard... I think Azure Moon actually does a good job of presenting Edelgards ideaology and motivations fairly and evenly when she is given opportunity to speak to them. But I don't think that's intentional. Based on Dimitri's response to her, dismissing her as "forcing her ideals on the commonfolk" (when he himself does and will *also* do that as king). The fact that her ultimate fate is turning into a mindless monster and being killed. The fact that the last shot of the game is Dimitri turning to look at her body and Byleth placing a hand on his shoulder as if to say she isn't worth it (or, admittedly perhaps to say that he needs to move forward, but i think both can be true). The route ultimately presents Edelgard as an extremist. An extremist with motivations that are understandable, but still an extremist.

So the only roles for women in this narrative, to sum up, are villains, peanut gallery, or motivation for the male lead. Meanwhile men, almost solely, drive the plot forward and have the most input on what the ultimate fate of Fodlan is. It's extremely frustrating and to be clear I don't post this to say that people who find something valuable in Azure Moon are wrong, or sexist, but just... To put it out there. Maybe there are people like me who dislike AM and aren't sure why, and maybe this can bring some possible reasons to light. And i think it is always a good thing to be critical, especially of things we love.

Oh also Sylvain is there a lot and he's extremely gross about women in every possible way.

#fire emblem #fire emblem three houses #fe3h #three houses #three houses spoilers #azure moon #blue lion #fire emblem critical #three houses critical #fe16 #fe3h spoilers #azure moon spoilers

[semi-imaginary-place]

fe3h blogging 6 because organizational skills are for losers

oh hey yuri get to join chess club[3:24 PM]balthus DID go to the officers academy twice I’ve been trying to reconcile the route differences... it should be that everything that happens in a different route is also possible in the route you are looking at which ever one that may be. Now all there is is figuring out why those differences exist. or alternately to come up with a probability model to explain those differences. Let’s take the major difference of CF vs VW, AM, and SS. In CF unlike the other routes, Rhea is not captured, she organizes the knights and joins with Faerghus. In CF unlike other routes Byleth chooses to side with Edelgard and Rhea attacks them in the Holy Tomb, this is the only difference. Rhea is incredibly entitled when it comes to Byleth and so takes Byleth’s choice as a deep betrayal as the one who was supposed to be on her side chose not to be. In the battle of Garreg Mach, Rhea then also doesn’t entrust the Church to Byleth. Now how does this connect to Rhea avoiding capture in the battle? It could be she was more on guard after the Holy Tomb in BE, it could be that overall Rhea is likely captured but there is a chance she isn’t. Either way because she isn’t captured, she is there to rally and organize the knight’s of Seiros. In the other routes why didn’t Seteth do it? idk man. The Knights and Faerhgus together are better able to fend off the Empire and with the added security, keep Cornelia, the Agarthans, and Edelgard from framing Dimitri with assassination. Thus in CF Faerghus is in a more unified and powerful position with Rhea running the show. Never quite got why Garreg Mach was abandoned by all the sides given how much the characters talk about its strategic location etc. etc. In SS Rhea degenerates and causes the church to become a rampaging hivemind. Rhea is assumedly also in the palace in AM, but we do meet her in VW. This leads to a few possibilities, either she also dragon degenerated in those routes but the credits roll before we get to see that or she doesn’t. Either way she hold the potential to do so. This is probably the strongest probability argument in the game as we are shown no reason why she does in SS but does not in VW. Rhea is like a ticking time bomb. Maybe they should have blood minstrated like half the church. And then the Agarthans, are they just chilling around underground in AM? yeah, probably. They’re probably back to biding their time just like they have the past 1000 years.

I would like to talk about the three categories by which I evaluate how much I like a character in a series. 1. Personal preference: how much does the character's personality appeal to me on a personal level. Would I want to be friends with this person in real life. Do I just really wish they were real and want them in my life? 2.  Character writing: how well written is the character. How good is their character arc? What is the grade of execution? 3. Role in the story: what do they bring to the series as a whole. If they are a villain, are they a good villain? Comic relief. The Bro character. No matter the archetype, how well is it done. What is their narrative and thematic significance.

Let's look at the 3 Lords of Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Please note that due to the branching story line and the ability of the player to choose the cast, I will not be focusing on a character's role in story as much as I usually do. Edelgard Personal preference: low. Her personality clashes with mine Character writing: high. Three Houses characters in general are well written. Edelgard feels like a person, her behavior is internally consistent, she's always herself. One of her main flaws explored in the game is how Edelgard will tunnel-vision and double down on a decision, a path even when it is no longer the best option. Role: high. In Crimson Flowers and to a lesser extent Silver Snow Edelgard acts as the central character, she drives the story. As the villain in 3/4 routes, Edelgard is incredibly interesting, acting as a counter point to the other Lords as well as to Byleth in Silver Snow.

Dimitri Personal preference: low. At first I didn't care, and then he was just annoying. He was solidly #2 on my to-punch-list in Azure Moon after Gilbert. Character writing: high. Dimitri has the easiest to notice character arc in the game as it is the main focus of Azure Moon. As such the most time is spent on his arc and it is very strong. The journey Dimitri goes on as he struggles with himself and his trauma is well written, its only weakness being that it hinges on the player (me) caring about him (which I do not). Role is the story: medium high. the overarching story of the rightful king reclaiming his throne nicely parallels the story of Dimitri reclaiming himself. Thus the external journey mirrors the internal one. Azure Moon most strongly brings the human element to Three Houses and this is both a strength and a weakness.

Claude Personal preference: very high. I wish I had a Claude in my life. His personality meshes well with mine and my life would be enhanced with the addition of his company. When I say Claude is my favorite, this is the category I am usually talking about. Character writing: high. Claude has the subtlest characterization and character arc of the Lords, this is further obscured due to mischaracterization by the English localization team and English voice actor. The characters in Three Houses in general are brilliant and Claude is no exception. He's complex and multifaceted as any real person is, and seeing him grow in to his own in Verdant Wind is a beautiful thing. Role in story: high. Claude's role in the Three Houses is also very interesting, his objectives especially in White Clouds turns the game into a mystery thriller which is breaking edge for a Fire Emblem Game. Claude's background is also a bit different from the others and so following along his story, you are able to gain perspective and see all of Fodlan for what it really is.

Jeralt personal preference: meh writing: good role: dad

wait. wait. so are the 4 apostles are called saints in the intro, but were they also children of the goddess?  so i can see indech and macuil dipping after the war of heroes and cethalenn went into a regenerative coma so that takes her and cihol out of the picture, but where were the 4 apostles during the war?  and why does balthus' pants have a specially colored patch for his crotch.  ... did balthus go to the academy twice?  dimitri really went “i’d be nice to just sink into the earth you know” huh. i just started cindered shadows so i can't really comment but... the whole "abyss is necessary for garreg mach" is such horse shit. like oooohhhhh we must have an oppressed underclass to maintain our standard of living.  why do the ashen wolves even exist. its not like there's a school down there and yet a bunch of people have uniforms.  its not like they took some of the officer's academy uniforms either. why waste resources making custom uniforms? oh hey yuri get to joisn chess club. balthus DID go to the officers academy twice. I wonder what happened to Constance. Also hello??? Intsys you have a kidnapping and torture as backstory problem, especially when its happening to female characters. Hapi get’s kidnapped, tortured and then imprisoned, no wonder the life has left her eyes. Also I don’t trust this Aelfric dude. He set up the ashen wolves “house”, but wouldn’t those resources be better spent on food and medicine. nepotism ho! your parent were good so you must be too

anyone else find Jeralt and Sitri's relationship a little weird. Hundreds of years old dude romances incredibly sheltered 19 year old with little life experience. and she and alfric idolized Jeralt when they were young. sitri was born in 1139 and died 1159 from childbirth.  I mean yeah Sitri's an adult and totally consenting and loving, and the relationship is pretty cute and sweet, but.... its kinda weird.... Like when you hear about a 30 year old dating a 60 year old, everyone's well into adulthood, they're consenting adults who can do whatever they want,  i have no objections,... but its still kinda weird. WHAT'S WORSE IS THAT THEY DEVS HAD LITERALLY NO REASON TO DO THIS they could have made her any age they wanted to. She could have been 35. but nooooo they didn't do that

the part that bothered me about maneula's writing. Is how the writers talk down on her for having emotions. You see this strongly in the hanneman+manuela paralogue. Where they make her do something impulsive which has negative consequences, which is fair. But then the game punishes her for being too emotional. "being too emotional" now where have i heard that critique before. This is especially in contrast to the game praising hanneman's intellectual rationality. how do i say this... whenever hanneman and manuela argue the game always takes hanneman's side and is overly harsh on manuela.  Oh hanneman is right that she should not have run off after a rumor about the death knight like that, but its the framing of the scene that bothers me.

the way people talk about the abyss reminds me of the goldfish bowl metaphor. the abyss provides sanctuary, but in it thye are also trapped. huh so edelgard doesn’t recognize dimitri. people sure do like aelfric, reminds me of a cult of personality, but it seems so genuine... A great rhea’s golems are back. they talk!! I was just joking about people’s souls being bound in there!!! aelfric is one of the cardinals!!!!! I've been trying to find these dude for months!!!!! you hear these lines going on and on about the cardinals. oh. he’s part of the seiros hivemind then. hey kids. if he’s a cardinal than the church probably already knows. this don’t tell the church stuff sounds like a trap. that letter is suspicious af. yuri clearly wants something, but what is he up to,,,

Yeah.. it really sounds like the 4 apostles were nabateans, but if that were so are constance, hapi, balthus, and yuri really descended from them? the 4 saints bloodlines in adrestia are from those gifted blood by the saints. yet i do believe the 4 apostles fled to different corners of fodlan, what remains in question is only if there in their new homes they gave blood (like rhea did to save jeralt), or actually did have kids.

i cant believe balthus got put on the bus via giant bird. ah so aelfric and yuri are cooperating with the agarthans. thats what they were up to. wow yuri really is fandom claude, i can still hear those idiots complaining that claude wasn’t up to anything and that he didn’t betray byleth. huh so yuri is struggling with split loyalty and the solution he came up with was to help aelfric but give byleth hints. 

constance calling the holy mausoleum a wretch hovel in on par with sylvain calling the dining hall filthy. huh so that was what yuri was planning. wasn’t expecting the double agent ploy.

so this does not take away from aelfric's decisions, but if rhea hadn't been a coward and just buried sitri instead of keeping her is storage where anyone could find her, this never would have happened. who know's maybe aelfric would have still made horrible decisions, but not this one horrible decision.

wait wait wait. rhea, what happened last time you used the chalice to try and resurrect sothis. what beast was created then? wait wait. nemesis dies and sothis’ heat and bones were retrieved in 91. the blood chalice ritual happened in 185. That’s enough time for rhea to have conducted her first experiment implanting the creststone into someone and having them live out their full life.

 prior to cindered shadows i thought claude had 2 given names much like many real world people of dual identity do (multiracial people, chinese americans, japanese americans, etc.), so claude is his name but he also has an almyran name. now though I am leaning towards the idea that claude is a name he took up upon entering fodlan given what he says to balthus at first and the presence of a claudia riegan in the past. from the feast of decadence: where is boramas? and i hope the bit about watching northern swordsmen ripped apart by wild animals at dinner was a play or something. why do books end up in the abyss anyways. why not burn them throughly. rhea certainly knows people have been living down there.  i wonder who built abyss. its older than garreg mach for sure.  real ironic how the blue lions idolize loog when he was an agarthan pawn not unlike edelgard.  rhea's choice contributed to the power imbalance between sreng and duscur compared to faerghus chevalier became village elder and gave everyone blood during wars. half got crests half turned into demonic beasts. that solves that. 1/4 down

i can’t believe aubin almost died in a ditch before yuri’s mom saved them. well that’s one more person with a really long life span

balthus: describing "bashbros" me: its called a life partner. "Balthus became son-in-law to the great commander, Nader" ... what. also why is the balthus yuri pairen ending the only one balthus ends up broke and on the street in. also where's my holst supports. scratch that. WHERE IS HOLST. oh yeah and you all were crying about byleth potentially outliving everyone, well yuri does too

ashen wolves supports that should have happened. Balthus: Manuela. Yuri: Mercedes. Hapi: Ignatz, Petra, Claude. Constance: Lorenz

Also let judith be a playable character. Claude and balthus already have like half a support with her.

why do feel like yuri and sylvain would be a disaster. and disaster in that they'd hurt each other's feelings

claude whenever balthus opens his mouth: shut up shut up shut up. shut up and go away. goddess. please. no. i enjoy seeing claude annoyed more than i probably should

me taking the fe3h developers by the shoulders and shaking them furiously: WHY DON'T CLAUDE AND HAPI GET A SUPPORT. THEY EVEN BOTH HAVE CELESTIAL MOTIFS!  claude would also empathize with hapi as an outsider of sorts, as well as both sharing a desire to explore the world.  i think the riegan crest and timotheus crest got mixed up in development. in tarot readings the moon is associated with darkness, an unclear mind, madness, creativity etc. it suits "dark dragon" far more than "star dragon". but that doesn't explain why claude gets the unique combat art Fallen Star me one again taking the fe3h developers by the shoulders and shaking them furiously: WHY DON'T YURI AND ASHE HAVE A SUPPORT!! THE APPARENTLY ALREADY KNOW EACH OTHER. THEY HAVE SIMILAR BACKGROUNDS. THEY'RE BOTH FROM FAERGHUS. THEIR BATTLE DIALOG SAYS MEANS THEY WANT TO BE FRIENDS

No bathus/manuela support either LET THEM MAKE POOR LIFE CHOICES TOGETHER. Balthus can have a little milf, as treat

...  yuri is very pretty in part 2

Edelgards biggest flaws are her desire for control and her stubborness or the way she will double down on a decision and refuse to budge. Claude's biggest flaws are his inability to trust, and showing his hand too late. A bit more on that last part. A large part of Claude's strategies involve downplaying his side and biding his time. This strategy is especially weak though to an aggressive opponent like Edelgard who can bulldoze him before he has time to play out his plan. Part of the problem is that Claude is very reactive but not very proactive (its one of the reasons I like pairing him with Edelgard and Petra). He won't just go for something the way Edelgard does, he's wait for the right opportunity. This difference you can also see in how the deal with the Church. Edelgard declares war on them because she thinks they are the root of Fodlan's social problems and need to be taken down. She makes a decision she believes in and readies herself for the consequences. Claude actually believes much of the same (The Church is the root of Fodlan's problems) but would much rather avoid those consequences (fall out with the Church). You see in Verdant Wind he will make use of the Church because the are useful. He's even willing to spout Church rhetoric and propaganda (Byleth as a Church symbol) if it suits his end goal of transferring power to an individual who will shape Fodlan's future to his liking (he does have an altruistic and humanitarian goal much like Edelgard). However in doing so he risks empowering the Church even more. In short Claude will put up a facade that he doesn't agree with on an ideals level and so is always in danger of that facade becoming real and failing his goals. yeah so claude character development has him learning to trust and being more proactive in his goals. so i like pairing him with characters that put him on a similar growth trajectory

wait how are the Fetters of Dromi (Aubin) and Vajra-Mushi (Chevalier) around simultaneously with Aubin and Chevalier. Aubin was last seen 20 years ago and the tales of elder giving blood don’t seem ancient, so were they recently killed?

ok if the vajra-mushi is a replica, what’s it a replica of? that implies an original. and its still able to turn people into demonic beasts. how????

unpopular opinion: I hate seteth. his face pisses me off and every time he opens his mouth I want to punch him. please die.

You know... i'd expected someone to have written a modern au of felix and sylvain being roommates with unresolved sexual tension.... but no its been 9 months and I haven't seen anything. Oh I've seen roommates where its like the new and uncomfortable experience of sharing space with someone you dont know and I've seen modern au where they are childhood friends. But i seriously have not seen the specific scenario where they are childhood friends AND roommates. Like... uuugh its just sylvain. But also uuggh its just sylvain?!? Maybe I'll just have to do it myself... but im no good at writing... 

What if glenn was 160cm but the kids never noticed (except sylvain) because they're so much younger

I want a spin off fighting game starring ferdinand and caspar. Honestly i just wanted to see ferdinand get into a fistfight with someone like in his support

On a fandom level I think the golden deer are the least popular for a number of reasons:

1. some of the characters only reveal their depth in supports and paralogues. Or in other words you must seek out these character to get to know them. Ex: Lorenz, Leonie, Ignatz. I mean without doing their supports you'd never know that Ignatz is the smoothest out of the Golden Deer the the most likely to get a date. If Sylvain is a poser, Ignatz is the real deal 2. Related to the above the writing sometimes relies too heavily on a character gimmick. Ex: Raphael, and Lysithea to a degree 3. Compared to other houses there are less established dynamics. Other characters (Linhardt and Caspar, BL childhood friend squad, etc.) can play off of each other and this can make them more emotionally accessible to a player. In the beginning especially the golden deer act more like co-workers than friends, they are the least cohesive as a house (which means their growth is that much more delicious). 4. the golden deer route in general is less popular and some characters don't appear in other routes so the sheer amount of exposure these characters get is less than other houses. a lot of people in the "fandom" have only played one or 2 routes and those usually include either azure moon or crimson flower/silver snow. people will also just delete or add things to characters.

OK Jp audio thoughts: tiny grandma sothis Alois is gravelier and yells a lot  I've been replaying the line where claude giggles in the jp audiio. How do i record audio ignatz is such a BABY in the japanese version. Like a small bunny Edelgard sounds more princessy Claude is more light hearted, less sassy more... boyish? like that one old school boy character trope that used to be a main character thing and is now more a side character thing eng dimitri more yell-y and feral.  jp dimitri is a lot more subdued and dead inside. but the delivery of the lines makes what he is saying all the more disturbing. dissonant serenity.

your path lies across my grave is such a raw line

Why did yuri get a different part 2 sprite.  he should age the same rate jeralt did. And in his paired ending with byleth? He apparently looks about the same after decades

Hilda and catherine would be EXCELLENT war masters if the devs weren't sexist

So almyra's big. We don't know how big. Fodlan is 2/3 of europe and almyra is bigger so i imagine there's a diverdity of biomes. I imagine the south coast is mediterranian. But that hinges on how subtropical adrestia is. Medditerranian climates are most common at 30-40 lattitude. The map of almyra we can see on the map is the same lattitude as faerhgus. This could be the greenest part of Almyra. I imagine almyra has both hot and cold deserts with a large plain covering the center. The rest would be scrubland/chaperral. All we know is that claude grew up somewhere with no big trees. I imagine that almyran government is more meriocratic than fodlan but that may vary region to region. I have an idea for both a centralized and decentralized almyra. Each regions leader is like the strongest most organized person around. A bit of nepotism may be involved. The exception would be the coast region which is more sedentary (some parts of almyra are semi nomadic) and may have a republic. Decentralized almyra would work kinda like the eu or us with seperate nations and a mediator for when almyra needs to act as a whole. That mediator aids negotions between regions and keeps things together. Mediator would be a council/appointed position. In a centralized almyra there still wouldn't be a monarachy. The king would choose a sucessor. So the king's kid would have a better chance than anyone but its no garuntee. I like the idea that like the 30 closeat relatives has a last one standing system as part of the selection system. This would allow for a dynastic style if ruling where there's a ruling clan but not direct line of descent 

Everyone keeps drawing older felix with long hair but I'm half convinced that 3 years post game he just lops,it off one day or gets a buzzcut

So a lot of people including me have long suspected Claude had an Almyran name and the validation right now just feels so great. Khalid!  Given his dialog in cindered shadows I think its more likely Khalid is the name his parents gave him and Claude is the name he took up upon coming to Fodlan

Things have never been easy for Claude, he says in his s support that he's going, to do it (the whole game/war) all over again. It's heavily implied that things to not end well for Claude outside of VW. i don't think the Almyrans would value a surrender to a fodlander tho. Claude in VW proves his competence as a military commander and leader by controlling all of fodlan. Its stated in some of his paired endings that the current king has some say in who the next king is as Claude had to earn his father's approval to ascend the throne. Don't forget that the general Almyran populace hates Claude. He has to prove himself by their standards before any respect is given and in SS/CF/AM he doesn't do that. Remember that the Fodland stereotype is of cowards and that Almyra values spectacles of strength/fighting prowess over tactical efficiency (invading fodlan's throat isn't for the purpose of gaining land/etc. its for the warriors to show off how strong they are), so they wouldn't value strategically weakening your nation (leicester) to stave off imperial invasion, to them that just looks like cowardice and incompetance. not only that he endangered and wasted Almyran soldiers in fighting a foreign war. Remember that no one really knows about Claude's plans outside of VW, he keeps his cards (too) close to his chest, and in non-VW routes the facade of weakness becomes a reality and all his schemes crumble. and he has little to show for his time in fodlan. Claude is less likely to experience character growth outside of VW, but I think there is potential for Claude's character growth outside of VW. One reason for this I'm just not a fan of Byleth's dating sim powers where everyone just falls head over heels for them. For every character and especially the lords, Byleth acts as a catalyst for the character's growth, but Claude (of the lords) is the least dependent on Byleth so I do believe he could have found some of the connections seen in VW if not to that extent. (also I'm a sucker for found family)[4:22 PM]But Byleth does act as the heart and glue of the golden deer so things wouldn't be that great for Claude and co 

So we cam see both turkic and persian influences in almyra but I've always wondered at the balance. From the turkic side we have the warrior culture and horse riding. This is also where my speculations on a nomadic society and non monarchy forms of government come from. Also note turkic (central asia, like the mongols) and not turkish (one of the turkic ethnicities). On the other side is ancient persia which was a center of science, technology and learning, a materially wealthy empire with imperial dynasties. These are very different and so balancing headcanons has always been challenging to honor both sides. You can see people are all over the spectrum in fandom.

Me shaking dorothea by the shoulders: YOU ARE VALID. I AM PROUD OF WHAT YOU HAVE ACCOMPLISHED. EAT THE RICH

im a caught between the dual desires of seeing sylvain succeed at something and be really cool, and seeing sylvain publicly make a fool of himself. sylvain miserable for mundane reasons is such a good look. I pin Sylvain in a headlock and force 2 gallons of respect women juice down his throat

In any universe. Claude's weekly schedule would fill me with terror.

Leonie and dorothea both have "I know a guy" vibes

A while ago I complained that the fodlan calendar doesn’t make sense. Why does the year begin on month 4? Well I recently got around to reading through the abyss library and it confirms that fodlan used to be on the gregorian calendar with months 1-12 lining up with our january-december which in a lot of countries are just month/moon 1-12 and then seiros and the church brought in a new calendar system (imperial year and "___ Moon" naming system). so combined with the other hints from the agarthans (un symbol, ICBMs, etc.), pretty much confirms that fodlan is indeed a post apocalyptic modern world. So the weird calendar system DOES have an in universe justification!

#fe #fe3h