#of course the Fodlan games would never talk about this

[randomnameless]

Re about Cat :

In Nopes she complains because her dad asks her to lend CoS troops, instead of asking Dimitri or Rhea herself...

But unless Count Charon is as dumb as Leopold, he knows pretty well Cat isn't the one who can lend him Church soldiers.

Of course Fodlan dgaf about non students characters, especially if they are affiliated to the Church, but I wondered, maybe Count Charon didn't want to ask Rhea herself to lend him some troops because he has a strange relationship with her -

Rhea is, after all, the one who welcomed his daughter when she was hunted by the Kingdom and the reason she's alive, Dad!Charon, whatever was his position during the "Cassandra hunt" wasn't the one who protected his daughter, Rhea was.

Maybe he feels already to indebted to her to even ask her, in person, for more soldiers?

As for Dimitri...

I always found it disappointing how both game never explored more Cat's backstory, ffs if Faerghus was "feudal uwu", the Crown (even if it was during Rufus' regency) ordered Cat's death, she was branded a traitor and someone who commited regicide ffs.

What was happening with House Charon at that time, were they happily going to give their daughter to the crown, when Catherine was the presumptive major crested heir, to have her executed? When the entire Kingdom branded her a traitor and had her name besmirched, was House Charon totes okay with, you know, the accusations that their precious heir participated in the plot to kill Lambert?

Lonato throws a fit because Christophe was executed by the Church, but Lonato is only Rowe's bannerman - Charon is one of the major Houses in the Kingdom, wouldn't they have thrown a "larger" fit if the crown wanted to execute their heir??

Or maybe that could fell in the larger "the Kingdom was in chaos" thing - House Charon might have been "this" close to rebel against the Crown ?

In a way, it might explain why Garreg Mach wasn't visited by the Kingdom's forces asking Rhea to hand Cassandra over if the crown's forces had to cross Charon territory to reach Garreg Mach...

So in with this BG, it would make perfect sense why Count Charon wouldn't ask Dimitri for more soldiers (granted we're talking about Church soldiers?) - Charon is still a loyal bannerman who fights for Faerghus, but his trust in the crown would have been severed, and it's up to Dimitri to rebuild that bond.

#3 nopes #Catherine stuff #Fodlan AU #I mean it's one basically even if I'm musing loudly bcs the game can't give fucks about characters who aren't students #and I mean interesting fucks #what if the “we had to cook some lie to prevent the kingdom for further descending in chaos” during the Ashe paralogue #was this? The Church framed Chris' at the one who participated in regicide and not Catherine to avoid a civil war #aka Charon raising their weapons and calling their bannermen to arms to rebel against the Kingdom and the Blaiddyd's? #i don't remember where but I thought I read somewhere that #Chris was the one who framed Catherine? but I think that's headcanon? #but even if he didn't #I mean Chris wanted to kill Rhea who was the one who 'welcomed' Cassandra #the CoS is basically Cassandra's benefactor would the Charons have ruined Gaspar in retaliation? #'my daughter is innocent and you fuckers are trying to kill the woman who helped her and help us all during those rough times?' #Targetting Gaspard means targetting Rowe and it means Adrestia is free to look more closely at Arianrhod #Oh well #tasty honey for y'all

[teaveetamer]

Edelstans really lack self awareness huh? "We never said she had no agency, that's why we stalk and harass these haters/gross fujos cause how dare they say she did those bad things, she was forced to do so and it wasn't too bad, and it's the victim's fault for existing, and Dimitri's just as bad, etc etc uwu" And I especially like how you noted that they were going to look at your blog and throw a fit only to do exactly what you said. Very charming on their end.

Of course they did exactly what I said they would. They're in too deep to stop now. They need to keep justifying to themselves why it's "okay" for them to attack us, otherwise people there might start catching on to the fact that what they've been doing is abhorrent.

Anyway, a bit anecdotal but it's definitely not just "one or two" people doing this to Edelgard either. Let's just set aside for the moment the "better than canon" fanfic they always rec which spends the bulk of it's text treating Edelgard like a sad little girl with no agency. Let's talk about the most ridiculous example I've encountered of Edelgard stans completely refusing to acknowledge her agency.

I have had some really intense arguments with Edelgard stans insisting that she never set Bernadetta on fire. When I could prove with actual, literal, video evidence that she does set Bernie on fire, I was told that it was a programming mistake/glitch/bug because Edelgard would never.

Like holy shit. When you're to the point of accusing the programmers of making a mistake because you, the end consumer who did not work on this game in any capacity, can't reconcile your reading of the character with things that canonically happened... I don't know what you want me to say.

I also didn't include this screenshot because it wasn't really relevant to the point I was trying to make, but a few replies down turns into a full blown r/SelfAwareWolves moment. Someone (paraphrased) says "people only want us to acknowledge her agency because they want us to think she's a villain"

You're so close. The reason why so many of us don't like Edelgard has nothing to do with misogyny or queerphobia or whatever. It's because we looked at the decisions she made, acknowledged that she made those decisions with full agency, and we think those decsions were wrong. I think starting a war of conquest is wrong. I think trampling the sovereignty of two independent states is wrong. I think continuing to work with people who perform human experimentation is wrong. I think benefitting from the genocide of a race is wrong. I have seen no convincing argument from your side on why I should change my mind.

Fuck me man, all three of those arguments have their own agency stripping counterarguments that I've been hearing since 2019. Literally everything from "defensive invasion, she knew Claude and Dimitri were going to invade her so she had to attack them first!" to "Fodlan was never REALLY three independent countries so she didn't REALLY decide to trample on their sovereignty!" to "she had to because she had a gun held to her head and the Agarthans forced her!!!" to the classic "um, she was like 9 when that happened" (She was not 9).

Do y'all not see how ALL of that completely strips her of the agency you keep insisting she's so feminist for exhibiting, and why some of us might think that's super lame?

[mousegard]

why hubert von fireemblem is a trans woman

ok so this morning i wrote a rambly little essay in a discord server i’m in about why i read hubert von vestra from fire emblem three houses as a closeted/in-denial trans woman and figured i’d share it here on tumblr:

so the in-game details about hubert, the pegasus knight yearnings, the straight razor as one of his lost items (prefers a close shave... i bet you do, buddy), outright disliking being called a man is all just... so very very eggy but what really got the trans headcanon juices flowing was the way hubert talks to edelgard in their supports. particularly their c-support. the dynamic of edelgard's feelings of regret that hubert is forced to share her path in life and hubert's insistence that there is no path he would rather walk really struck a chord with me regarding gender dysphoria and what it does to you 

in my experience, most of the trans people i know, myself included, start out from the assumption that our own desires are impossible to achieve. whether because you don't yet know that trans people even exist, or because you've only ever seen them portrayed as jokes or cheap pathos perverts. even when you know that transition is possible it still feels like something you can never hope to achieve. and so since you can't live your own life, you live someone else's life. you bury that yearning part of you that knows what it wants and dedicate yourself to being the person your parents want you to be. or your friends want you to be. what your social circle expects you to be. and you say, "yes, this is what i want. this is the path i want to put my life on. this is who i am. no it doesn't bother me. i'm happy like this" 

not to discount hubert's loyalty to edelgard, of course—he's clearly a true believer in her ambitions and her goals and will do anything to bring about the world she seeks to create. and like edelgard, hubert is willing to throw aside his own desires, his own freedom to decide what is to be done with his life, so that the rest of the world can have that freedom. like edelgard is resigned to being a villain and dying a villain's death, so too is hubert resigned to being a man and living a man's life. i think details in the game, from the way he carries himself and performs masculinity, to very obvious things like the pegasus knight fixation (more on that later)

somewhat related, there are some lines in hubert’s b-support with byleth that really jump out at me when i associate them with the dynamic between edelgard and hubert:

hubert is, of course, talking about byleth in these quotes and discerning the presence of sothis within them. but, of course, there's no way for him to know just how literally correct he is in these lines. after all, only byleth can see or hear sothis. so i think the aptness of hubert's similie here and how telling the language he uses ends up being for byleth isn't just hubert talking about byleth but rather him using that imagery of a second self with desires different from one's own lurking beneath the surface to describe himself

there are no details in fe3h canon regarding how easy or difficult it would be to transition in the game's setting, which is hardly surprising, but it's a bit of a moot point. even in the modern world, with hrt more easily available than ever before in human history and the vast strides in transition related medical science that have been made through the 20th and 21st century, transitioning still feels impossible before you've started to do it. you'll tell yourself, "well, sure, that other person transitioned, but i can't, it's still impossible for me," whether because transitioning would expose you to danger in your family/larger community or because "hormones just won't work on me like they work for other people, because reasons" or both. but i digress. with fodlan's institutional heteronormativity we can assume cisnormativity as well.

thinking about how impossible it might feel to be trans in fodlan makes me think of a section of a poem written by a 14th century jewish philosopher, kalonymus ben kalonymus, that is very clearly about transfeminine longing and suggests the possibility that kalonymus may have been a trans woman. this section, titled "prayer for transformation," is such a strong examination of dysphoric feelings and despair. i personally love this poem and i have used it in other trans headcanon fics in the past, in other fandoms, and you can read the full english text beside the original hebrew here: https://opensiddur.org/prayers/civic-calendar/international/transgender-day-of-visibility/prayer-of-kalonymus-from-sefer-even-bohan-1322/

that's not even getting into hubert's overall character design—with his height, his build, and the general matt smith-esque features of his face, being a trans woman would no doubt feel more impossible in his eyes than it would be for someone who got a more "favorable" spin on the genetic roulette wheel (someone like ferdinand, perhaps, who definitely seems like he could perform androgyny or femininity with so much more ease if he were so inclined than a broad-shouldered, six-foot-two frankenstein's monster). and of course, he prefers clothes that cover from head to toe, much like edelgard herself does, hiding as much of the body he does not feel comfortable in as possible. which is, also. a very trans thing. all in all, hubert comes across as uncomfortable in his own skin and with the trappings of masculinity to a degree that honestly strikes me as entirely intentional on the writers' part, especially with this (thanks to teaspoon translations on twitter for this nugget of localization):

this in particular is what pushes my thoughts on hubert being a trans woman from "headcanon" to "no, this isn't a headcanon, this is actually just what the game's text says, and i will die on the hill of hubert having been intentionally written by someone on the writing team to have gender dysphoria and be a closeted/in-denial trans woman"

i could go into so much more detail about how hubert performs masculinity and how he leans into being off-putting and frightening around other people because it’s easier and safer than being the person he wants to be while also not wanting people to feel unsafe or uncomfortable around him (see his supports with bernadetta) but i think that’s enough on why hubert is very obviously written in-game as a closeted/in-denial trans woman for now

lastly, i want to talk about how i write transfem hubert in my fire emblem fanfics and how i picked a name for her, which of course lean harder into headcanon territory since they involve actually making things up:

the name "hubert" is derived from the germanic elements hug, "heart, mind" and beraht, "bright"—bright heart. when i was searching for a name to make hubert's own in my first transfem hubert fic, i looked for similar meanings and found "heidrun"—derived from old norse heiðr, "bright, clear" and rún, "secret"—"bright secret." a secret that has been made clear, a desire of the heart brought forth for all to see. making "heidrun" the name of an in-universe fictitious(?) (wink wink) legendary pegasus knight whose origin story was a boy being blessed by the goddess and transformed to a girl as a reward for his faith so that he could be a pegasus knight was my way of tying that name as well to hubert's feelings of religious disillusionment and complex attitude toward his faith

also if some sort of magical and/or folk medicine hrt does exist in fodlan (1.) manuela definitely knows about it and (2.) a couple years of facial feminization via hormone replacement would make heidrun look like sigourney weaver and i think that’s great

also also jeritza is also very arguably canonically transfem in the same respect, but you can go to @strawberry-crocodile​ to learn more about that because i am not the jeritza expert here. anyway both in-universe and irl edelgard von hresvelg just draws trans women toward her like stand users attracting other stand users and i think that’s real fuckin neato

#long post #hubert von vestra

[theeeveetamer]

Mitri Appreciation (Birthday Edition)!

Strap in everyone, we're talking about Three Hopes!

One of my favorite things about Three Hopes is how it brings Dimitri’s care and consideration for the people of Duscur to the forefront of his character. This was something that got really overlooked in Three Houses, mostly because the entire Duscur storyline got really overlooked in the writing of Three Houses, but I think it was always intended to be part of Dimitri's overall character

Now, there's the obvious stuff he does for the people of Duscur in Hopes, like actively working to return the land to the Duscur people, punishing the people responsible for the tragedy, and improving relations between the people of Faerghus and the people of Duscur. That's not all I'm going to talk about here, though, because there's a lot more and some of it is much more subtle

Throughout Azure Gleam, we can also see Duscur NPCs around the camp, and slowly over the course of the game the Faerghus and Duscur characters grow to trust each other more and more. This is at least in part due to Dimitri's concentrated efforts to try and repair the relationship between Faerghus and Duscur. For a more direct example of Dimitri doing this, Dimitri also has a conversation with Ingrid to try and clear up her misunderstandings and encourage her to get more comfortable around their Duscur allies.

At no point does Dimitri deem the people of Duscur as not trustworthy, not worthy of respect, or not integral to the army. To my memory, there is never any conversation about whether or not they deserve to be there, and he carefully considers how best to integrate Faerghus and Duscur soldiers to minimize complications.

Also, Dimitri never treats Faerghus's relationship with Duscur as though they should be anything but equals. Let's be clear here: Dimitri realistically does have all of the power over them. Were he to renege on his promises to them, there's realistically nothing they could do to stop him. Faerghus is bigger, stronger, and it would actually be much easier for him to tell Duscur to get bent, considering half the civil war problem he's facing happens because he and his father before him tried having good relations with an independent Duscur. He could use that to exert pressure on them at any time (e.g. demand more troops, more supplies, get them to make concessions in negotiations, etc.), but he never even entertains the idea of using it. He never views their relationship as transactional (i.e. "help me win my war and maybe I'll give you independence"). He never views Duscur reparations as something he is magnanimously bestowing upon them. He genuinely believes that a great injustice has been done and it needs to be set right. There is no threat that they won't get their land back if they don't fight for Faerghus in the war, for example. They fight on the side of Faerghus because they genuinely believe in Dimitri and they genuinely believe he will deliver on his promises. It just demonstrates Dimitri's integrity and his respect for the people of Duscur.

Another point to demonstrate his respect; he's also extremely respectful of their language and culture. Dimitri and Dedue's B support and Dedue's C support with Petra both reveal that he is fluent in the language, at least fluent enough to be able to draft letters to their leadership without any assistance from Dedue. Which I have to assume would be "very fluent". Additionally, when he communicates with the members of Duscur's leadership he does so in their native tongue, rather than expecting them to speak his native tongue. He became fluent in an entire second language, rather than arrogantly expect them to learn his language.

Not only that, he dedicated a lot of time to ensuring Dedue could become fluent in the language of Fodlan as well! Petra notes that Dedue is almost indistinguishable from a native speaker, and Dedue credits that to Dimitri. Not only did Dimitri teach him the language, he was always there with Dedue to correct him, help him be understood by those around him, and presumably shut up anyone who would mock him for speaking strangely. And Dimitri did not balk at the idea of learning Dedue's language, or treat Dedue as if it was expected of him to learn the language of Fodlan for them to be able to communicate. Dimitri quite literally did everything in his power to make Dedue feel welcome, including learning Dedue's language to ensure they could communicate properly.

And you know, this isn't exactly assumed behavior in this universe. This is in stark contrast to Petra's treatment at the hands of the imperial nobility and royalty. She was literally left to fend for herself entirely, and mocked mercilessly when she even tried. As far as I'm aware, there is no Fodlan character who fluently speaks her native tongue, nor are there any who are interested in trying to learn.

I think all of this paints a really clear picture of the kind of character Dimitri is supposed to be. He is someone who acknowledges injustice and tries to set it right on the terms of the people who have been wronged. He is someone who will go out of his way to ensure people feel comfortable and safe. Honestly, I'd play an entire spinoff that's just Dimitri trying to navigate restoring Duscur without some pesky continental war threatening to conquer Faerghus the whole time. Who knows, they might even finally let us have snow in that game!

#dimitri alexandre blaiddyd #Fire Emblem #fe3h #fe16 #few3h #three hopes #ok I'm a little late for his birthday but #I had more to say than I thought

[fantasyinvader]

I went back to the parley scene, and I feel it’s a lot stronger than people give it credit for. Dimitri actually engages with Edelgard’s actions and ideals, and Hopes only gives more evidence to support him on this.

Dimitri: There had to be a way to change things in your territory without the need for so many senseless casualties.

Yeah, Hopes did show that Edelgard could oversee reforms to the Empire, only when she created her own Church preaching her ideals as those of the goddess that Rhea stepped in. But then, Hopes makes it very clear that Edelgard’s real goal is conquest of the entire continent so it was never about just reforming the Empire but to make the Empire span all of Fodlan and then change it to suit Edelgard’s will.

Edelgard’s whole spiel about how her path actually leads to the fewest casualties is counted with Dimitri saying that she’s deaf to her victims’ cries. Hopes made it very clear that Edelgard is someone who turns her head to things she doesn’t want to see. That she was so focused on seeing her endgame come to fruition that she was willing to turn a blind eye to what TWSITD were doing in the Empire, even if it meant sacrificing a close ally to them. Edelgard is obsessively devoted to the war, just like Dimtiri says, which makes any talk of her path being the one of fewest victims laugable. Of course you can claim it’s the best path when you deliberately ignore all the bad stuff.

Even those claims that Edelgard is doing this for the “weak and silent,” those who would continue to suffer under the current conditions, is called into question. Edelgard wants to impose her will upon all of Fodlan, Hopes making it clear that she’s wants to wipe out anyone who doesn’t bend the knee to her. The game titles her as HEGEMON after all, someone who has dominant influence or authority over others with the Japanese version of the game saying in her ending she imposed a “strong, centralized authority.”

Edelgard strengthens the position of the Imperial throne through her war, giving herself absolute authority to which she can give authority to those she feels have earned it. Those she views as having merit, those she views as STRONG. As for the weak, she says the following:  “ If after all of this you believe the weak will still be weak, that is only because they are too used to relying on others instead of on themselves.” If her system fails, it’s the fault of the people.

She says she’s doing this on their behalf, but she’s willing to sacrifice as many of them as needed in order to shape the world as she sees fit. The idea that change has to come from the people themselves is dismissed with Edelgard saying Dimitri knows nothing about the plight of the common man despite his years living as a fugitive (or just saying he had people to support him unlike her in the JPN text). Yet Edelgard uses her power to push down everyone who doesn’t agree with her, either stripping them of their own power or putting them into the dirt. She is not empowering the people, she’s empowering herself and Dimitri calls that out.

“Will you steal the power to take action from the broken-hearted masses you claim to defend? “

Which fits with the ENG text saying Edelgard’s regime puts down rebellions in the shadows. Again, Edelgard is titled as a hegemon across various routes. She is not power for the people, as CF outright says that the people of the Empire did not agree to this war (until Edelgard began spreading propaganda) and are being conscripted to fight. All this to make the world EDELGARD wants, peak self-righteousness (something she actually concedes).

“ And do you intend to become a goddess yourself? “ becomes relevent when you take into considering CF endings that says the Church comes back under Imperial supervision, though seemingly no longer the Church of Seiros, while in Hopes Edelgard openly starts her own Church and it’s influence is talked about in AG, where by accepting it as the faith of Fodlan you’re giving the Empire control of your country. At the same time, Edelgard is saying she has to do this because the Goddess doesn’t answer people’s prayers. Combine this with the meaning of the world “El,” something she wants Byleth/The player to call her, how her ending picture appropriates Napoleon’s coronation picture which in turn was based on an ancient statue of Zeus, or how Edelgard takes possession of the Sword of Serios... There’s a lot here to make Edelgard appear to have a god complex of sorts.

Not helping is the fact that she’s already captured Rhea, but still deems the war “necessary” for things to get better.

Dimitri is the one who actually sees Edelgard’s reforms for what they actually are. No wonder he gets vilified by the people who buy into her words despite the game outright portraying her as a liar. It also fits into the whole Oudou v. Hadou dynamic the devs said AM and CF have with each other, the one time the games actually address that Edelgard’s words are empty.

[gascon-en-exil]

What are your thoughts on the concept of hindsight critique i.e criticizing a character's actions/decisions based on knowing what's going to happen next due to already experiencing the narrative before? For eg, criticizing Ladlegard for being ignorant towards Fodlan's history, having the wrong information/facts and blaming the wrong people when she's just acting on what she knows and what she's been told (she's still the villain fwiw).

I'm a pretty staunch Doylist when it comes to media criticism, so talking about a character acting based on limited information when the audience has the whole picture (or as whole as it's ever going to get, anyway) is a bit difficult for me. I inevitably start thinking instead about why Edelgard is so misinformed, and what this does for her character and for the story. The obvious answer is, of course, that the writers split the worldbuilding across four routes and made the question of who is and who isn't a reliable narrator an ambiguous one, presumably out of a desire to be clever and/or to cultivate fandom faction wars for marketing purposes (which it absolutely did).

In light of that I have to consider the question: if Edelgard instead knew the truth, would she behave differently? I'd say not, because her biggest character flaw is her extreme tunnel vision; she believes only in her own truth and her own willpower, and that as a result only she can arbitrate Fódlan's future. That's classic villain logic, particularly as it's undercut by the numerous similarities in epilogues and character end cards across all routes (not to mention how she only gets her desired outcome in either game if she's allied with Byleth, reminding us that what both Three Houses and Three Hopes are selling above all else is player pandering with Edelgard as their top-billing waifu). Edelgard never wavers or compromises, only even conceding to a shaky truce with Claude in SB and GW when she realizes that fighting a war on two fronts at the same time isn't going so hot for her.

Even if she were to learn who really created Crests, and who really broke up the Empire and why, she'd simply work those into her existing worldview which wouldn't have to change much at all. Either way she still wants the continent united under her and her loyal supporters, and the Agarthans, the church, the Kingdom, and sometimes the Alliance all stand in the way of that. Criticizing her for not knowing the whole story when I don't think it would make much difference either way doesn't strike me as all that useful.

#Fire Emblem #FE16 #Fire Emblem Three Houses #Fire Emblem Three Hopes

[tinnictheguardian]

Fire Emblem: Engage (spoilers)

So I just finished Engage and I have thoughts! I am putting them below the cut because I don’t want to be accused of spoiling. I also make some references to Three Houses. So expect spoilers for Three Houses too!

Let me start by saying that Engage is an extremely good introduction/reintroduction of the Fire Emblem tactics mechanics. The story mode, for the most part, is basically a very long tutorial on what FE is all about.

I love how you get the direct damage/healing rings at the beginning, but then they are taken away from you. So you are forced to use the new six rings, which are more advanced and involve you putting your characters in the right position on the board.

It’s pretty clever, and of course, you must wait until Chapter 22 to get all the emblem rings. At which point, you can, if you want, stop the story and just play Tempest Trials, skirmishes and the like. Certainly, you can keep playing after the game is cleared because, ultimately, Engage is about the tactical gameplay of Fire Emblem.

That said, it's obvious to me that the story of Engage is an allegory for the series as a whole. I mean, it ends with an explicit invitation to engage with the previous entries in the series. But also, Sombron says that he wasn’t trying to destroy any world or “conquer” other world but was looking for the “Emblem of Foundation”.

It seems obvious to me that this mythical “Emblem of Foundation” is supposed to be us, the players. He does see Alear and Veyle through a light filter. So you could say that Sombron realised his daughters were the Emblem he was looking for after all. However, given how brutally Sombron keeps rejecting Alear, Veyle and any connections he had in-universe, it’s obvious to me that what Sombron was looking for was us, the players, as personified in-universe by the protagonist Alear.

Alternatively, the players he was looking for were the players that fell off the Fire Emblem train in the last 23 years.

So I can see why Nintendo is pushing Engage so heavily in Japan, the only country that got all the Fire Emblem games. This game is designed to introduce Fire Emblem, the tactical game, to new players, hopefully rekindle the love for Fire Emblem in old players and also satisfy the players who never left.

The main story of Engage is Alear’s story, and it’s good enough. It is a classic coming-of-age story where the reborn Alear finds her place in the world as a divine dragon who believes she has to save the world.

Near the end, she could have believed Sombron and stopped fighting because Sombron said he had no plans to destroy Elyos. But letting him go would have meant making him someone else’s problem, and good dragons don’t do that. Also, Alear is the deity of Elyos. She wouldn’t be much of a deity if she just let Sombron walk away after all the damage he did. Especially in front of the four future rulers of the land closest to her seat of power.

This is a good time to talk about Engage vs Three Houses. Many people have commented that Engage has a worse story than Three Houses. But others have pointed out that Engage’s story is more tightly written. I have a different proposition. What sets Elyos apart from Fodlan is world-building.

Fodlan has a better build with more thought-out history. It also feels like a small part of a large planet.

Plus, you are not actually fighting to save the world in Fodlan. No one in Fodlan is trying to destroy the world. They are trying to shape the world and, through shaping it, control it. Even Thales and TWSITD don’t want to destroy Fodlan. They want to be colonisers who extract wealth and resources from Fodlan at large for Shambala. For much of Engage, you believe that you are saving the world. This is a different stake because if Alear doesn’t act, Elyos is destroyed.

On the other hand, if Byleth (or Shez) stay out of it, Fodlan still exists. But someone unsavoury gets control of the wheels of its development and, if it’s Thales, purposefully hobbles Fodlan because it is not to the benefit of extractive colonisers for colonies to develop beyond a certain point. This is different from Rhea because Rhea wanted to arrest Fodlan's technological development because she didn't want humans to reach the great filter point again. People forget that Fodlan is explicitly a post-apocalypse world where technological advances backslide literally into medieval times after a devastating war. Elyos doesn't hint towards anything that grand in its past.

Also, in Fodlan, everything has some sort of explanation. Why do crests exist? There is an explanation for that. Why is Dedue, Petra, Shamir or Claude in Fodlan? There are explanations.

On the other hand, Elusia and Solm retainers especially seem to suffer from the “we thought they looked cool” problem. There is a randomness that I feel undermines world-building but not necessarily interpersonal drama.

Take Merrin, for example, you meet her in the desert, but she’s wearing fur. Is she Solmic? Is he from the borders, and like most border people, she doesn’t bother identifying with either Elusia or Solm? I haven’t seen any support conversations that explain these things, but more importantly, it also doesn’t matter. She’s with Timerra because they randomly met after Merrin ran away from her village because she wasn’t ready to be the matriarch. It’s entirely personal and not related to any big movements of the world. This is both a strength and a weakness. Because Merrin meeting Timerra is a self-contained thing. But that means the story of their meeting doesn’t add anything to the world. It's an event that happened.

I commented on a post on Reddit that people think Three Houses characters are deep because their trauma is largely related to the events of the main story. Meaning that the threads of their personal story weave together to enrich the tapestry of Fodlan. I stand by that.

Engage’s characters have depth, but they don’t add to the tapestry of the story. Even knowing that Kagetsu is from Pale Sands, which does NOT appear to be part of any of the nations we see, I feel like Elyos is only the things you see, and that sort of kills my curiosity for the world. While we know Fodlan is just one part of a living world, and I always want to know more about the other nations!

Finally, I spent most of the game wondering what the Emblems were. Were they the actual souls of the heroes or just constructs? By the end of the game, Emblem Marth confirms that he is a construct and there is a real Marth somewhere. Even though Lucina is 2000 years in the future from Marth, by travelling between worlds, Sombron can come upon a living Marth and then go to another world and find a living Lucian. Not dissimilar to Fire Emblem Heroes, where every world and every time in those worlds are accessible through the Askr gates at all times.

The problem is that the Emblems talk for a large part as if they were the heroes. Byleth talks about being a walking lost and found service. Tiki talks about someone putting her to sleep. Not to mention they talk as if they have experienced all the events of the other games, including variations. The best way I can describe it is that Emblems feel like Woody, from Toy Story, who knows he is a toy but at the same time, they are also Buzz Lightyear, who doesn't know he is a toy. So for me, this is all immersion-breaking.

Still, I think we can all agree that Emblems are magical constructs. Then the next question is, who created them? When did they create them? We know in-game that the mage dragon Zaphia can create powerful artefacts. She or another mage dragon probably created the time crystal that allows you to have divine pulse-like abilities in Engage. So did a powerful mage-divine dragon create the emblems?

However, you can also interpret how the game talks about the emblems as something that’s always existed in Elyos. But this vagueness, in many ways, weakens the world-building of Elyos because rings are not organic. They have to be crafted, leading to the question, why were they crafted given they seem to pre-date Sombron?

Every question like this is totally unimportant and inconsequential to the gameplay but does weaken the world-building of Elyos.

The last bit of weakness comes from the divine dragon themselves. Engage is very religious in the sense that it is a story of where you take your place as the God-Ruler of Elyos. But there is a big sign that Lumera wasn’t a perfect queen.

She let Brodia continue to invade Elusia, which probably explains why Elusia worshipped Sombron. If I was a citizen of Elusia who lost my land to Brodia and Brodia was a follower of the Divine Dragon, who my people also worshipped but who didn’t do anything to help me, I too would find a new God. It’s one of the problems with having a living God walk among the people.

Ultimately, a God who lives among the people becomes like a really powerful ruler. Someone who controls your life but who can become an oppressive figure because they control your life. But exploring any of that is beyond the scope of Elyos, and there is nothing wrong with that.

However, if you are coming from Three House and you supported anti-church factions because you don’t like the idea of a deity ruling over you, well, you will get whiplash from Engage!

Overall, I think Engage was worth the 100+ hours I put into it. I probably will continue to play Tempest Trials and other things. Also, I did pay for the DLC, so I will be looking forward to getting the additions when they are released. I certainly recommend it to anyone who enjoys Fire Emblem's game mechanics!

#fire emblem #fire emblem: engage

[dimiclaudeblaigan]

It's honestly wild to imagine Claude growing up with no friends around his age, with so many people hating a child, and without his parents protecting him from danger. That last thing isn't even out of hate or maliciousness either, but (from what can be gathered) a genuine act of love - something that was so trust-breaking and world-shattering, know that not even his parents who DO love him (in his eyes, if nothing else) will ever protect him and that he was well and truly alone for the first ~16 or so years of Claude’s life (save for occasionally Nader). My boy deserves love 😭😭😭

Yeah. :( I can't imagine not having any form of a friend for so many friends. I mean personally, I don't consider my school friends real "friends", you know? They weren't people I relied on, trusted or hung out with often. They were just "school friends", but it was still social interaction and they were friends, but they weren't the kind of people who just last in your life. You still need people to talk to and have fun with though while growing up and I can't imagine not having that at all. :(

Also, YEAH, the way so many people actually just... despised him? As a small child? Like... I can't even wrap my head around someone hating a child because they were born with foreign blood. I mean, what kind of person do you have to be to literally try to assassinate a child? I mean of course that makes for an interesting story, but it's still horrible to think about! I've heard of instances of kids irl having to grow up fast because of life circumstances, and it's always such a sad thing when a child can't be a child.

In a way it reminds me of when Dimitri tells Byleth he "let his childish whims get the better or him" or something to that effect. His childhood kind of promptly ended when he was thirteen, so seeing him still have a childish side is kind of like, it's there because it existed at all in the past, but it was cut short and so it still sometimes pops up as if to make up for the lost time. With Claude, he's casual and sometimes goofy, and even if a lot of it is just his "fake" personality so to speak, I feel like he acts like that because he never got to in Almyra.

For sure, yeah, I think if you had someone who loved you but wouldn't protect you from danger that would really hurt your mentality as far as who to trust. Like, if you can't even trust your own parents to keep you alive as a literal small child, how can you trust anyone to be there for you? It makes his whole academy phase story a lot sadder when you see him acting like he's friends with everyone but if they were truly, honestly "friends" in his eyes, he would've trusted them more and been more open with them.

I think it's really, super telling that throughout the entire game, he never once utters a word to anyone about being from Almyra, and even if you S support him with Byleth he still doesn't let on as far as who he really is. He implies he's from Almyra in their ending, but he doesn't actually let on that he's royalty. It makes sense, but it's so sad to see that even if he loved someone, it would still take time for him to actually say something. Like, I'm sure eventually he did/had to to work with Fodlan properly, but the fact that he left and didn't even mention what his "connections" were is super telling about how afraid he is to trust literal anyone and everyone. He might not be afraid of people trying to kill him left and right, but he's definitely still afraid of trusting people.

I'm so angry he's not real LOL, I just want to pick up little boy Claude and cuddle him and put in a bed with fluffy blankets and soft pillows so I can tuck him in and pat the blankets on him and kiss his forehead. I honestly wonder if parents ever even did something like that, like tucking him in and saying they loved him and giving him a goodnight forehead kiss... I get the feeling that anything we would consider normal parent behavior wasn't something Claude ever got to experience. :(

#DCB Ask

[kanohivolitakk]

Three Hopes: General First Impressions +Golden Wildfire Part 1

Going to talk about my experience with Three Hopes so far. Finished Part 1 of Golden Wildfire, so I figured this would be a good point to showcase my opinions on the game so far. Well most of them, there are certain opinions I figured are best to be saved for other posts.

This is mostly going to be focused on writing/story stuff and some gameplay-story- integration because I mostly play RPGs/story-driven games for the story and characters first, gameplay second. For what gives though the gameplay itself is really fun. Some aspects bother me(the camera movement is quite frustrating and distracting, the camp-building is fun but timeconsuming and the side missions most of the game consists of are pretty repetive) but overall it is really fun. I enjoyed my time hacking and slashing, and the strategy elements add a lot meat and substance to the experience.

Ok so first things first, I feel Three Hopes is essentially targeted for a very specific audience: that being people who were fans of the original games story/world/characters, but who had some issues with how certain things were handled, or with elements of its writing. Im saying this partially because the game pretty much pulls itself right into action and spoils major twists of the original left and right, but Im sayikg this mostly because of the games general writing style. Because while Three Hopes does address a fair amount of issues the original had, and spends a decent amount coursecorrecting itself from its predecessor, it does so in a way that you have to like what was presented in the basegame to some degree. If you dont care for the original games story and characters one bit, it doesnt really try to change your mind. It feels very for the fans type of game, for better or worse, though so far its mostly for the better I think. Your mileage may vary on how you feel about this approach though.

Regarding the numerous changes and improvements the game has done to the games writing, the writing feels a lot tighter this time around. I feel a decent number of this has to do how it doesnt really meander on introducing and establish concepts the audience is already familiar with and instead sets its course straight to tell a new story. Another reason for the tighter writing is how it feels more tiedied up and less meandering. The characters say things that advance in a story, but its done in such way that feels natural rather than them just reading a script. Things like how chapters and even entire scenes are paced feels both tighter and cleaner while also giving more substance.

But perhaps the biggest reason for the writing feeling much tighter is how Three Hopes does much more showing than telling compared to the source game. One major issue I feel the core game had was how the game presented its world in a rather stilted manner. While the world of Fodlan is an ineresting one, with a lot of the worldbuilding being geniunely intriguing, a lot of its intrigue were only briefly touched on but never really brought to the front. A lot of Three Houses worlduilding felt like flavor text rather than a concrete part of the world. This is fine of course:a huge appeal of large worlds is that they feel they have things going on beyond what happens in the main plot, as this make them feel more alive and believeable, making it more immersive. But with Three Houses it felt a lot of the more interesting stuff was put into the background, and only mentioned.

Three Hopes manages to fix this. No longer are things only mentioned in the background: theyre actually presented clearly on-front. We dont just hear about the goings on, we actually get to see them and interact with them ourselves. They actually play a role in the story, rather than just being part of the world or an explanation to a characters motivation and backstory. Of course some things are still only mentioned, but no longer does it feel we only get to interact with a tiny fraction of the world. As such this is more forgivable, since now it feels like added immersion, rather than us being robbed of interesting stories.

This improvement of the way the world is utilized in Three Hopes is especially true with one aspect of its world: that being the politics. In Three Houses the political climate felt nebulous, more of a footnote than anything else. We heard about Fodlans political landscape, of course, but a lot of time it felt like a footnote. We only heard things about it, and never really interacted with the story. This really harmed the story due to it being story about war started due to dissatisfication of systematic norms, yet the story never takes time to show the political situation beyond mentions. As such, the politics feel hollow.

Three Hopes remedies this issue by actually presenting us the political ongoings. Take for instance the nature of the Alliance. In the original game the Alliance being a bickering entity was essentially only mentioned, but mever really plays a role in the story. Apart from mentions of how some nobles presented disdain againt Claude, it never really felt like a bickering entity it was presented as. By contrast, in Three Hopes they do show more how the Alliance functions as an entity. They actually show how it functions, and the differing opinions between different parties of the group it at least given more precedent.

Another thing I feel has improved is how characters are used in the story itself. In Three Houses all the non lord characters mostly are there to say a quip that showcases their main trait. Meanwhile in Three Hopes it feels they...contribute more to the plot? Sure the main lord is the most important, but that doesnt mean the rest if the cast is ignored and feels more incolvment. Some get even a few actual character moments in the story, which is really nice to see (that moment with Lorentz and his dad made me cry.) Even some of the enemy characters get a few really neat moments, which is something I appreciate.

As for the characters themselves, theyre mostly postive, with a few duds here and there. Some characters feel improved with their characterization: whether thats because the AU putting them into an interesting situation, removing what made them annoying or just honing their writing. I noticed caring quite a bit about characters I didnt give much care for in the base game (Leonie, Ignatz and Caspar are some of the big glowups so far for me) Other characters are about the same quality as in the base-game. Theres a third who are somehow worse than in the base-game, but so far there has been really one or two examples, and theyre only minor downgrade. Though thankfully most of my favorite characters have been treated well, with Lorentz in particular somehow being even better than in basegame (somehow) and even the ones that havent been as good as before got at least a few moments to shine. Some of my faves I havent seen much of(yet) so I cannot judge much of them.

As for the new characters...most of them are relatively minor but they do their purpose well. Shez is an engaging protagonist, I adore Holst so freaking much (he isbsuch a good inspiring role model/big bro and I adore him) and I honetly like Count Glocester more than I should. I was somewhat disappointed with Arval but I do plan to talk about that on sone other time( tho honestly I feel its best to judge their character once Im done w all the routes).

So yeah the games writing??? Pretty good. Once Im done w the game I feel I will judge it more evenly but I still feel it does a lot right.

#kirika talks #fe3h #fire emblem three hopes #few3h #few3h spoilers #minor ones but still

[randomnameless]

"[...] Edelgard is dead and that she will never get an education, rise above the station of her birth, or become more than a poor laborer getting taxed into oblivion by corrupt nobles [...]" aren't these issues mainly highlighted in Adrestia? With taxes being mentioned in the Hyrm paralogue (unless there are other mentions). And I know Dimitri's supports in Nopes touches on the other topics (with education being stopped by a food problem). So it's not like commoners are screwed if she dies.

TBH, being "taxed to oblivion" isn't seen in the game(s) proper save for Hrym but that's not a good look for Supreme Leader, so let's ignore that. I mean, she is running the country, and apparently doesn't bother telling Uncle to stop taxing to death the people of Hrym in the name of a guy she had in her basement for at least 5 years?

Instead... Leonie iirc complains about taxes, but when Lorenz tells her they were used to pay for Jeralt's services (and they the guy dumped everything in the nearest bottle) she doesn't push the "too much taxes!" angle anymore.

I suppose Supreme Leader's education system would work based on fruits and fresh water, so it wouldn't need money - that comes in the form of tax - to work? Unless we're supposed to understand Supreme Leader's new teachers will work for free because Hubert will kindly ask them to do so, and Doro will print books herself while Caspar will, on his own, build all the furnitures needed to get a school running.

Of course, they will do so freely, because Fodlan Adrestia became an utopia without the evil lizard lady's influence.

As for education in general, IRL (save for several states lol) people are willing to afford time and ressources to go to school or to let their children go to school if they don't have anythign "better" to do, like, idk, working to get enough money to feed said children.

or maybe Supreme Leader's Adrestia will have some sort of social minimal aid system - that isn't funded through taxes because taxes BaD - so Adrestians can send their children to school without being afraid of not being able to eat next morning thanks to that financial support?

But let's not talk too much about "semantics" and the intricacies of this totally canon version of what is going to happen after Tru Piss/when Supreme Leader kicks the bucket in non Tru Piss routes -

Anon, did you know feudalism BaD?

#anon #replies #fandom woes #this is the most tiresome thing about those debunks #the goalpost moves so often that you'd think it needs to piss #You want to talk about taxes? Then let's do it based on canon maybe IRL historical examples and what not #Education? Ditto even if it implies realising that Garreg Mach isn't a traditionnal school or even high school it's a military school #that is supposed to teach people how to fight war and lead #not to teach 5 years old how to read or count to 10 #if you want a school you need funding and if it's state funding it means taxes #if devoted fans want to talk about boring rl things like taxes education and what not then i know the topic is boring #but you can't end up with 'and everything is suddenly fine bcs i said so and talking about technicalities is boring even if i started it' #i remember an old politician once said something like morality don't fill your bellies or something like this #which was kind of stupid in the context he said it but it still has a modicum of sense #it doesn't matter if you have a master degree or two if you are effing starving

[soulcluster-moved]

since working out how Kaitlyn would fit into Three Houses/Fodlan is now on my brain, here we go (it’s long and rambly sorry)

I mentioned briefly before that I think the Amells would be from the Adrestian Empire. This is because that while the Free Marches themselves are very Alliance-like (independent cats, basically), Kirkwall itself has a dark history. It’s known as the City of Chains for a reason: it was originally a slave outpost for the Imperium. Kirkwall is also shown to be deeply cursed, with blood magic a much higher occurrence there and demons basically running rampant, due to the amount of blood sacrifices and other horrors that occurred in the city’s past. The Band of Three codec notes in DA2 even talk about how the city’s veil is thinner and was purposefully made that way by the Imperium. A lot of this reminds me of how TWSiTD perform their experiments.

Additionally, the Amells were very much about appearance and didn’t want their daughter (Leandra) to mix with a mage and introduce more magic to their line, which was part of why the Hawkes had to flee in the first place. 

Overall, Adrestia just gives me more vibes for Kirkwall specifically. So I can see that being where the Amells are from. Of course, Leandra does not stay in Kirkwall, she and Malcolm flee to start their new life in Ferelden and be free. 

Now, Ferelden, if I had to compare it, actually gives me Faerghus-vibes. Faerghus is said to be a rough area and there’s an emphasis placed on learning fighting early. There’s also the whole knight culture and system over there. Ferelden is often joked about being a ‘backwater’ country and being ‘barbaric’ cause of their more hardy way of life, and they’re historically a more militaristic society due to its history with the Almarri tribes. There’s also a strong ‘lord and vassal’ vibes because the bannorns swear loyalty to the arls, who serve the teryns, who serve the king. And definitely a big knight system (Orlais has Chevaliers but overall I think Ferelden’s system is closer, as even commoners can become knights but only nobles can became Chevaliers). 

Ferelden and Faerghus have several differences of course, but I feel they’re the closest approximation if we’re comparing the two games. (at least for me, I can also see Ferelden = Alliance vibes, but overall I just like Faerghus more)

So what this means for Kaitlyn is that her mother is from the Adrestian Empire but (likely due to some kind of social thing) she and Malcolm left there to start their family in Faerghus, where they became farmers. Kaitlyn was born first and then the twins, Bethany and Carver. Kaitlyn and Bethany are still magic inclined. I still need to work out why her parents left the Empire ?? cause there’s history there in DA that affects the family, but I’m kind of hand waving it for now (part of me wants to say Malcolm made some kind of deal to do work for a noble for the coup OR something related to TWSiTD, but magic is not viewed the same in Fodlan as it is Thedas so idk yet). I also think Malcolm could’ve died in the plague that killed the Queen Consort too.

Carver I can see wanting to become a knight and thought about the officer’s academy, but they’re poor af. There is no like... 1:1 for the Blight and the absolute upheaval it causes to the Hawke family, but I think I could pin it on Carver signing up as a mercenary for some company and while he’s away, Bethany is killed by bandits, perhaps (there’s really no darkspawn to work off of here). 

I don’t really have all of the details yet cause it’s such a complex mess (and it’s late) but I have this sort of idea of condensing the events of DA2′s Act 1 to how Kaitlyn gets the money and recommendations to attend the Officer’s Academy. That may not be the ultimate goal at first, and maybe the idea is that Carver can attend afterwards, but he ends up dying before that happens (as the Deep Roads expedition is where that tragedy occurs). Fighting has never been Kaitlyn’s thing but attending the Officer’s Academy could help set her mom up long term and provide for her in a more stable way (and Kaitlyn will do anything for her family). So she goes.

And then part way through the school year, Leandra dies somehow, and welp...

I kinda want to keep Kaitlyn being there when her siblings have horrible things happen to them, as it impacts her so much. She’s unable to save Bethany, Carver, or her mother, and it just breaks her to her core to have to watch them all die. Leandra in particular is a big ol OOF, but I don’t know if that can be replicated.

That’s all I got for now but maybe I’ll get more ideas later

#ooc #wip verse #honestly the hardest thing about this? #trying to spell Faerghus #i gave up and just starting copy/pasting it #brain is not cooperating with that word #im wondering if this ramble makes sense to anyone else tho #maybe im just talking into the void

[bbq-hawks-wings]

BBQ rambledumps for the first time in a while. Been running D&D.

What's up, my beautiful fellow clowns, how we doing today? I just logged in on desktop mode and saw a new message in my inbox only to discover it's a porn bot and they're sending videos AND strange URLs directly now. YAY!

Thank God, blurring content from users who don't follow you was an actual improvements made to this hellsite after years of fumbling features. Progress is progress.

Anyway, I originally came here intending to write about my Fodlan D&D campaign because I'm due to show some actual creative capacity here for once and prove I haven't completely gelatinized into a lump of depression and exhaustion. So yeah, more nonsense under the cut.

Nice, the icons have been switched around a bit - they're a little easier to read now.

SO! I wanted to two-fold introduce the campaign setting and talk about my players/characters - whom I will be referring to by their characters' names exclusively (except maybe Atlas) - because I'm actually having a blast with it all, and maybe some of you will appreciate the various eccentricities of this gaggle at my table, too.

First, the setting:

I...

LOVE.

FODLAN.

Idegaf about Fire Emblem as a larger franchise or series - this PARTICULAR story is EXACTLY the kind of thing that makes all the happy chemicals in my brain go brrrrrrrrr.

There's drama, political intrigue, romance, deep lore, references to various real-world myths, references to various real-world PEOPLE, repeating thematic motifs, a complex and nuanced look at conflict and war, a complex and nuanced look at religion and history, AND THE OUTFITS ARE SPECTACULAR?!?!?!

And if I kept thinking about it we'd be here all day.

One of the hardest things for me as a very n00b DM is that I know most of the power of the game and enjoyment for my players comes from the world they exist and play in. If I don't have a good grasp of how all the strategic pieces fit together across the map, how am I going to let my players roam and interact with it like it's always been their own idea and not me actually scrambling to slap something together that's satisfying for them while also not completely toppling my campaign?

And here I have not only this entire RPG I adore and already want to know like the back of my hand, that has characters that I delight in mimicking and writing for, that has nearly all the wiki knowledge I could ask for, but I also have the PERFECT excuse to write my Golden Route and let all my little chess pieces live happily ever after somewhere, AND there's a campaign setting already made for 5e!

Is the DM set up to have a good time?

Yes

Absolutely

With my setting chosen, I now had to figure out the various big plot flags to hit that would put it on course for the ending I want. Some big considerations I particularly kept in mind included:

Edelgard MUST start the conflict. There is never a scenario in this multiverse (according to canon obv) where she does not strike first because it's in her character to strike first for both her own survival as well as to protect those she's taken charge of. The second she thinks she has what it takes to confidently take her next move before her opponent the plot lurches forward full speed. This is what predominately sets her apart from Claude who is quite similar about the lengths he's willing to go to win but he's typically much more reactionary while Edel is aggressively preemptive.

If I don't want Edelgard to have all of Fodlan immediately in a standoff for survival that just looks like the other games with the other nations because of the complications that TWSITD throw into the plot, the truth of the Nabataen race HAS to come to light to her before anyone else. That means that she has to know BEFORE she retakes the Empire for her own regime. This means a BIG MESS for the Church of Seiros to deal with start-to-finish over the course of the campaign.

Going along with the previous point, once the true nature of the Church, the Children of the Goddess, and just what ACTUAL Fodlan history is (and remember, Edel hates these people pretending they're divine when they're clearly not, she is NOT putting up with that nonsense), Faerghus is going to be PISSED even if there's complicated feelings about how the nobility came to be, and Claude's scheming will get kicked into overdrive. There's no way I can't see it happening. Even if the Nabateans have FULL support and protection of Edelgard (which they will sooner than later) the bloody history between them and the nobility of the Kingdom will reach a crescendo and the Nabateans will have a LOT to answer for regarding their involvement in Fodlan history.

Where I want it to end is for all of them to overcome Thales and TWSITD with the help of Shez and Byleth. As a result, Sothis will be fully revived, she'll reward and bestow special blessings to the entire cast, and then she'll ascend into the heavens once again - but this time taking her hand of protection off of the world, opening the setting up to "D&D proper" so the players can keep playing in the sandbox they've grown attached to if they want, but they get way more stuff to play with now and we can actually use the core books for more than just basic rules YAY!

With that all set up in the back of our heads, let's introduce our players - all of whom besides Atlas is completely blind to the original plot (MWUAHAHAHAHAHA):

Umbrae: A knight from the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, Umbrae's father was one of the the victims of the Tragedy of Duscur. Discontent with the ambiguous non-answers that have been found regarding the massacre, Umbrae is on a mission to discover the truth of what happened and why - no matter what sordid secrets may be revealed in the process - so that the chapter of anguish and uncertainty for the nation can come to a close and healing can properly begin.

Godfrey: Originally from the Adrestian Empire, Godfrey was an aimless wandering sell-sword until he met the love of his life, Josephine - a monk of the Church of Seiros whose tender kindness brought light and hope into the lives of those she touched. She joined him with his platoon of fighters during the outbreak of plague in the Kingdom to treat the sick and afflicted along the way; but no good deed goes unpunished. While Godfrey and his men were called away to respond to news of a threat, the camp was attacked by those who feared their involvement was spreading the sickness. Godfrey returned too late to save his wife and unborn child and has since sworn an oath to the Knights of Seiros, now once again aimless in his purpose with nowhere to place his grief and anger except upon the heads of the wicked with the edge of his sword.

Booferd: A lowly thief from the Adrestrian Empire - there's not a lot to Booferd yet because he's only been to the first session and has been stuck studying to keep his GPA up. He's fantastic at this game, though, and I'll make sure he gets the chance to have a great time whenever he can play. He called Balthus "ball-face" in RP and he's going to get inspiration points for that.

Atlas: Hailing from the far-off land of Morfis, Atlas is an escaped experiment victim of TWSITD on a mission to save his fellow victims still trapped back at the lab and wipe the scourge of the Agarthans off the face of the earth. Unlike the Fodlan branches of the Agarthans, this base in Morfis raised humans like lab rats a la The Promised Neverland to simulate and study various conditions and outcomes their human experiments underwent. Atlas, an exceptional subject, escaped and eventually found his way to the docks of Adrestia where Hubert found him - seemingly incomprehensible and insane at first but then deceptively brilliant upon patient inspection. Hubert secretly scooped him off the street before he made more ruckus, cleaned him up and trained him, and then planted the unnerving foreigner into Garreg Mach as his personal mole (because Rhea loves picking up strays) - seemingly unconnected in every way while funneling information, secrets, and the nifty little gadgets he makes to the young man and his emperor who promise him a proper payment for his services.

This post is getting long and I need to get the kids up from their nap. I have more, especially since we're about 4 sessions in, so I'll probably make a new post soon. Feel free to send any ideas on how to tag this.

#she speaks #tag later

[theeeveetamer]

Scarlet Blaze Liveblog, Chapter 5

It got rid of my extra spaces when I hit post :( Why do we live? Just to suffer?

SPEAKING OF SUFFERING! Holy shit the new Tumblr beta editor REALLY fucking hates formatting. Wouldn’t let me make any of these sections into bullet points. I have been fighting with this thing for weeks now (it also really hates letting me remove large sections of text as well). Had to turn it off to get any semblance of formatting so I hope it looks alright when I hit post

Explore dialogue

Now we have an NPC saying that there SHOULDN’T be fog this time of year. Make up your mind, game.

Linhardt: Aw my lazy days are over :(

Shez: You know some of us never had lazy days

Linhardt: Yeah but weren’t you just doing that because you wanted to?

Uh, no it’s called Shez is a commoner and had to literally become a mercenary to SURVIVE. They mention that numerous times. In another support they talk about how they were happy to eat rats if it meant their belly got filled. jfc, Lin, the privilege just oozing from you…

There’s a random mage lady who asks you if anyone on the opposing side uses dark magic. Agarthan lady, perhaps?

Ferdie stands like someone wearing one of those babydoll skirts from Style Savvy and I love him

Interesting that they explicitly state that Hrym was wiped out for resisting Ionus’s power centralization here. IIRC that was a lot less explicit in 3H

We also have explicit trade with Dagda, Albinea, Brigid and others. So I guess that’s another point against “Rhea doesn’t let Fodlan have contact with outside nations”

Why does Randolph look like he has a tiny blanket on his shoulder lmao

Wait why was Constance hostile to living in the Empire again?

Oof. Between Dimitri and Edelgard, Dimitri definitely got the superior Hapi nickname

Random Tidbits

Lmao. Hubert being like “I don’t even have to try not to kill you” during training and Ferdie being like “uh. Thanks. I think.”

I really wish the game would tell me when a character maxes out support points even if the letter is locked. It’s really annoying building support and then just realizing it’s not going up anymore after you’ve wasted so many training points and whatnot

I’ve decided that I’ve stopped caring if units like the food I’m cooking. Y’all will eat it and y’all will like it. I’m done coddling your asses.

I don’t care if you’re bad at the tasks either. Caspar, Linhardt, I’m sure you’ll do fine at running this street stall.

HUBERT WANTS TO GO ON AN EXPEDITION!!! OH BOY!!!

Hol up lemme drop everything

I hope he takes me somewhere nice to kill me

Good thing I unlocked all these new excursion spots. Gonna drive me crazy tho since I’m pretty sure there’s different dialogue in each one

“The shorter a leash, the better”. Kinky

Let’s go on a nice waterfront murder date

“Once, two souls took a boat out on the water… Only one returned. A fine story, yes?” oh my god he’s actually going to kill me

I have a feeling he wanted me to propose a competition… No wonder Ferdie is his type

“Ask thoughts on their employer” that’s a new one, I don’t remember that question ever popping up before

Unfortunately I don’t get to stare at his face. I was really looking forward to more murder dialogue.

Support Conversations

Shez/Caspar C - Caspar has daddy issues lmao of course he does they all do.

Sorry, having daddy issues won’t save your appeal from that hairstyle

I was about to comment on Caspar being like “I’ve got to build my way up from the bottom” but then he actually addressed what I was going to say by acknowledging that he at least has his name to lean on. So good for you Caspar, I see you retain some semblance of self awareness in this game so far.

Shez/Linhardt C - Shez: Just so we’re clear, whatever Hubert said you were gonna do to me, I’m not into it.

Shez is not kinky confirmed :(

How is Linhardt NOT interested in Shez’s power. She literally fucking shapeshifts and he’s just like “eh, whatever it’s just a sword.”

Like. What. C’mon dude.

Shez/Monica C - Ok Monica I hate you

MANUELA/JERITZA B LET’S GO - GIRL STOP BEING SO THIRSTY

Oh my god do not make Jeritza smile

Manuela: Don’t you want to talk to people?

Jeritza: No.

Stop making Jeritza relatable to me

Lmao Manuela realizing she’s still single because everyone views her as a teacher

Come to me Manuela! I have a teacher kink! We can do both!

Caspar/Dorothea C - Caspar: I’m reading

Dorothea: You can read???

This support is weird. Caspar is like “I wanna study” and Dorothea is like “You need to study!!!! Here let me lecture you on how you need to study!!!!!!!!!!” Caspar: “WOW I NEED TO STUDY!!!!”

Like he was already doing it Dorothea, geez.

Shez/Manuela C - Lmao we stan a messy queen

Y’know Manuela we can smash. I’ll never leave you

Shez/Hubert B - Uh wow weirdly abrupt start. Am I supposed to take this as happening directly after the last one??? They’re standing in the same place and Shez starts like Hubert just said something

Like. Really weird way to do this

“Sever ties” so that’s what the kids are calling it these days

Shez: You have emotions

Hubert: *confused Hubert noises*

Lmao he just had to insult my intelligence there at the end. Never change, Hubert

I know this is a lot of supports but since I’m playing on NG+ I have like 8 activity and 8 training points so it’s stupid easy to get supports. I didn’t even talk about all of them. I imagine future posts will have less as I start hitting time gated supports

Side Battle/Story Content

I’ve been putting this off by playing free mode battles with the renown unlockable characters lol.

Omg Maximum ambulation. Ferdie runs so fast. He’s got the zoomies!!!

Oh no Hubert wants to kill talk to me

Hubert: It’s cute how u thought I would let you live, tho

HI DADDY RODRIGUE

Man first Seteth now Rodrigue? This route really hates DILFs I guess

I mean I’m not surprised. Look at Count Bergliez

RIP Gustave is here too. Guess they’re making him fight in this route

Main Battle/Story Content

Everyone: *whispering*

Ferdie: WHY ARE WE WHISPERING!!!!!!!???? :D

Ferdie you lovable himbo

Ok do we really need three rounds of “why is everyone so quiet” so everyone can get their dialogue about being quiet in?

I wonder if this conversation changes with permadeath. It’s kind of written like it

Maybe I should do an “everyone dies” run in the future just to see how the story changes lol

INGRID!!!!!! MY DARLING!!!!!

Lmao I don’t even like Ingrid that much but I already miss my Lions :(

Oh I guess Jeralt is in the Kingdom now

I mean they’re trying to do the whole “oooooh mystery who could it beeeeeeeee” thing but I know Ling Tong when I hear him

Oh looks like Ashe is a traitor. Can’t say I’m surprised

Honestly fuck Lonato. If you have a problem with sexy dragon lady you have a problem with me

I haven’t talked about this but honestly the colors are fucking me. It’s a good thing Warriors games don’t have friendly fire because I keep running right past all the soldiers in blue to try and kill all the soldiers in red, because like. Fire Emblem do be like that normally

I keep finding big purple circles on the ground. What is that. What does it do. Who is doing that

I actually feel like a bad person for recruiting Ashe here. I mean Lonato is literally willing to kill the poor kid

Edelgard: Family should not fight family

Also Edelgard: Unless it’s Dimitri fuck that guy lmao

Also Also Edelgard: Also Rhea, since she probably banged my great great great great grandaddy a thousand years ago (and maybe is my great great great great grandmommy). Fuck her too

“I could not bear to lose another son” Ok then maybe don’t try killing him, Lonato???? What the fuck?

If saving you weren’t a requirement you would be so dead right now, Lonato

Byleth was kind of a pushover on NG+ lmao

… I’m sorry does Monica have jiggle physics

Ok her boobs don’t have jiggle physics, but her bow does. Which makes it look like she has boob jiggle physics. Why.

JFC Bergliez is so ugly

JUDITH MY BELOVED

She was surprisingly absent from AG I’m glad I get to see more of her

I’m sorry, Bergliez got all the way to Deirdriu????? When???????? When did we do that?????

Damn we killing daddy Gloucester, aren’t we? This is dead Fire Emblem dad dialogue

Oh even this guy gets a first name. Not the moms tho. Fuck the moms I guess :/

I’m surprised Fleche got a name and wasn’t just “Randolph’s sister” for the entirety of 3H

Kinda awkward to hear Petra complimenting the dude that murdered her dad

“The head of House Ordelia is one of the Five Great Lords” am I misremembering? I thought Lysithea’s family gave up their seat at the roundtable to Marriane’s uncle because they knew their house was in decline thanks to Lysithea’s condition

I went looking through her supports to see if I was right and apparently Lysithea/Hilda support confirms homeopathy of all things exists in 3H. No wonder these people still die of the plague.

Ok I couldn’t find anything and I don’t care enough to keep looking, but I got my eye on you, continuity guy

“Consider why we chose not to dismantle House Aegir” goddamn Hubert is just going straight for Ferdie’s throat

Ferdie: Haha I’m in danger

Also RIP Ferdie basically blatantly admitting that he’s only still around because he’s willing to “toe the line” regardless of how he feels about anything. Why am I supposed to be rooting for the Empire again?

I don’t get why people are like “We went to school with these people for 30 seconds maybe they’ll listen to reason” like? Why would they, exactly?

Like it was stupid in 3H but at least they had a whole year in 3H. In this game they were all literally at the academy for like a month

Recruiting Ashe also feels weirdly OOC for him after he spent the entirety of AG’s prologue and parts of part 1 talking about how Lonato would want him to do what he thinks is right and how he believes Lonato has gone off the rails, and while it hurts him, he believes it’s right to stop Lonato. Here he’s just like “Ok fine I don’t want to kill him I guess I’ll join you. Fuck my dreams of being a knight.”

I guess they had to make someone from the BL recruitable and everyone else makes even less sense than Ashe. I mean can you imagine if they let you recruit Ingrid here? Lmao

Anyways wrapping up

Spoilers for recruitables in this route here here.

Can I just say, the spread of recruitable characters, from a gameplay perspective, is kind of weird?

On SB, of the characters you get automatically, half of them are mages (5 of your starting 11 are mages).

Not including the wolves or other characters, you get Ashe, Ignatz, Lorenz, Raphael, Lysithea, Marianne, Mercedes, and Leonie (under special circumstances) in addition to the SB characters. But like. That means on SB you get two axes (Caspar, Edelgard), two swordies (Shez, Petra), three mounted lances (Ferdie, Jeritza, Lorenz), one brawler (Raphael), four archers (Bernie, Ashe, Ignatz, Leonie), and eight magic units (Hubert, Dorothea, Linhardt, Monica, Manuela, Lysithea, Marianne, Mercedes). If you include the wolves you get ten. Ten magic users. What do I need ten of these guys for? What is this game’s obsession with mages (the Lions also had way too many, though it wasn’t this egregious and at least Annette can be a serviceable axe unit once she gets Crusher)?

Made even worse because there’s only two magic master classes, and only one magic master class per gender which means you’re going to be ending up with two dark bishops and eight gremories. You can’t equip tomes as a dark knight or holy knight either, you have to use the lance, which is not optimal for many of these mage units. No idea why they decided to take out Valkyrie and Dark Flier if they were going to create so many damn mages. Basically every other weapon type (aside from archers and brawlers) gets at least two different options for master classes, and there aren’t nearly as many archers and brawlers as there are mages.

I guess I’ll use Constance and Hapi more on GD, since at least they only come with Marianne and Lysithea to start

#SB Liveblogging #Scarlet Blaze Spoilers #FEW3H

[raxistaicho]

Replying to DPRHD’s post

I can’t get away from this one, it seems :’D Got another reply.

Not really a moot point pal, since TWSITD wouldn’t have bothered with Lambert  if it didn’t benefit them or anyone they’re working with. The Kingdom nobility wouldn’t have partook in regicide if Lambert didn’t get killed which again happened because of TWSITD who did it for Edelgard’s benefit. Their plot for revenge included destablizing the Kingdom so that Edelgard whom they experimented on can “bring salvation to Fodlan”. You trying to bring up the “well the Kingdom nobility partook in regicide too” whataboutism doesn’t negate or count as evidence that TWISTD didn’t do it for her sake. 

If you think the Agarthans were just oh so nice to Edelgard with everything they did, I really don’t know what to tell you. I guess they strongly believed in freedom for the people of Faerghus when they helped to split the Kingdom from the Empire, too.

This isn’t about absolving the Kingdom nobility of what they did though. This is about you arguing that Thales was lying that the Tragedy was done for Edelgard’s sake. Way to move the goalpost buddy. This of course ignores the fact that Duscur’s regicide (which was wrong on the Kingdom’s part I’ll give you that) wouldn’t have happened if Lambert wasn’t assasinated and that happened because of TWISTD.

That wasn’t about moving goalposts, that was to target a disgusting defense of Faerghus that I see again and again and again from Edelgard’s detractors. Bring tricked into it isn’t an excuse for knowingly committing genocide, and I actually see her detactors or fans of Azure Moon bring it up regularly. I don’t understand why they can’t admit that Faerghus has a lot of shitty things to it like people on our side can admit that Adrestia is a pit of corruption before Edelgard takes the throne and begins removing the corrupt elements. I brought it up because it’s related to the subject at hand.

If she’s using them and their resources for her benefit and not turning on them before her war along with assiting them on the other stuff they did such as Flayn’s kidnapping (which if you fail the mission she kidnaps Flayn), and the Remire Village tragedy (which she saw the results and did nothing) 

I actually made a post on the subject of Flayn’s kidnapping and why Edelgard wasn’t responsible for that. As for Remire, she didn’t know it was happening until it was too late to stop it.

Nope, the church refused to let them go after Kronya and Solon out of fear that it may be a trap. It was Edelgard who presuaded them to let them go after Kronya and Solon and it was also her who gave the idea of going after them to Byleth.

And Thales knows that... how? It’s not about tricking the Church, it’s about tricking the Agarthans.

That’s just headcanon pal cause the game doesn’t give any evidence that Edelgard is afraid of this guy. The only time Thales retaliates is Arianrhod but that is only one example of Edelgard talking back and not showing respect and facing consequences out of a million where she does that and suffers no reprecussions. 

Never said she was afraid of him, just that he’s her boss in White Clouds.

Also if Thales really dominates Edelgard, then why would he request her to give the Death Knight to him, shouldn’t he be able to take him by force without any objections? 

I’m glad you brought that one up. Thales seems to like phrasing his demands as requests so as to demean his interlocutors.

Nope, Edelgard does know about Dimitri’s quest for revenge and in her own words did nothing.

Your quote was grabbed from the end of the game... I’m not sure that’s proving the point you think it is.

Ingrid knows about Dimitri vouching for Duscur’s innocence, and Sylvain deduces it as well. It’s likely his pleas are known, but no one is willing to listen to him as shown with Ingrid.

Actually, Ingrid’s wording implies the opposite of what you suggest. If she knew he’d said, “Hey, I was there, I saw the whole thing; they didn’t do it!” then why does she “not understand” why he defends them?

Only four years ago, they murdered our king and slaughtered the soldiers and knights who were with him, all of whom were innocent. 

Why’s she directly contradicting him if she knew his thoughts on the matter?

Even if he can forgive them, I can't—not ever. What they've done is against all codes of honor and ethics. 

When she says he “takes their side,” it appears to be in the sense that he appears, to her, to have forgiven them for what they did.

Even if we want to include the headcanon of the experiments affecting Edelgard’s memory (which I don’t believe considering she knew about Dimitri’s revenge and wanted to save him as mentioned above)

Cindered Shadows directly confirms that she suffers from memory loss.

Dimitri is Edelgard’s friend in the same way Claude is. 

So... not at all, given she doesn’t trust him either?

If she isn’t willing to trust him but is a-ok with trusting the terrorists who ruined her life and their conspiracy theories, that’s on her, not on Dimitri. 

She doesn’t trust them, she’s trying to use them. Where do you get the idea she trusts them?

The link is that Arundel neither in a flashback nor to Dimitri ever mentions resenting the Church to the point where he stopped giving donations and Dimitri doesn’t mention it either.

Resenting the church is far from the only reason to stop donating to them.

And the money reason can’t apply later on especially since after Thales killed him and takes his diguise, he takes over the Hyrm region after dismissing Duke Aegir and starts taxing people.

That doesn’t happen until the end of chapter 11, at which point everything’s coming to a head and the Empire declares war on the Church...

But TWSITD aren’t political rivals but a terrorist group. Edelgard can explain that Arundel was killed and replaced by Thales considering that she (or at the very least Hubert) knows this and they can provide some evidence to prove their point 

Arundel is a political rival; he was one of the people who stole power from her father. Before chapter 8 she’d look like a lunatic to suggest that he’d been killed and replaced by a doppleganger, and even afterward she has no evidence.

that being Dimitri pointing out how he stopped making donations to the Church and didn’t continue despite never mentioning to him ever about his resentment to the Church. 

If Dimitri can’t convince his own people as their next king that the people of Duscur were innocent of killing the King when he was there to witness the events play out, how’s he going to convince anyone Arundel was behind it on flimsy evidence like that he stopped donating?

#Fire Emblem Three Houses #edelgard von hresvelg #edelgard positive #edelgard discourse

[kendrixtermina]

I think Wilhelm was a False Friend to Rhea. He played the part of the supportive friend to her face to get her help in overthrowing Nemesis and becoming the ruler of Fódlan, but privately saw her as just a monster. He wanted to get rid of her himself, but never got the opportunity during his lifetime. The royal family being taught a version of history that blames everything on the Nabateans came from his view on them, even though he got all the political power from the war.

There is no way to know what actually happened, so a lot of things are plausible/possible, but from that one line that Rhea gets describing him in the tailteen plains battle it sounds like he was a true believer much like Catherine or pre-fiasco Jeralt. For Rhea to fondly remember a human she met so shortly after the massacre they must've been on good terms.

She could've been fooled of course & despite her not trusting anyone(her own words) she's plainly not good at playing detective seeing as she missed all the moles at Garreg Magh, so it's not implausible.

But Rhea's the only one who knew the real Wilhelm in his own time. His descendants would only have stories that they'd be interpreting through their own lens; If you see the need to explain a discrepancy there it seems more likely to find the explanation in the 1000 years in between, where any number of things could happen.

The change in perspective could have literally happened any time between Wilhelm's time & Ionius. If you want to postulate a drastic reinterpretation, The expulsion of the sourthern church 100 years before seems a more likely candidate.

However the Nabateans were a ruling class before Nemesis' (that was unambiguously stated by the devs in an interview) massacre.

However, once we move from Wilhem's own person to how whatever he did or didn't pass on might affect his descendants in the present, I'd like to remind you that Edelgard combed through the monastery archieves in search of additional evidence before declaring anything to Byleth, looking to corroborate the story, and that she takes a pretty dim view of her ancestors, seeing them as sellouts.

She is not at all just following what she may or may not have heard.

And do you even need to be told some tale to come to the conclusion that Rhea is a bad ruler? Is it not obvious from her behavior?

I really hate this tendency to take all the agency away from Edelgard & act like she is just following something someone told her - she is portrayed by the actual game as someone who is all about self-directedness & proactivity, humanism and logic, who, if anything errs on the side of being too logical & detached/looking only at the numbers. She gets like all the tropey spock dialogue like "Mathematically it's possible"

...and yet some ppl seem incapable of seeing her as anything else than misguided & lashing out blindly, & the way it so crassly contradicts her actual in-game characterization so blatantly is hard to explain by anything than the common prejudices that 'young people can't know what they're talking about' and 'women lash out emotionally'/ 'women are reacting victims'

I honestly hate it more than the ppl who just see her as deliberately evil/megalomanic cause at least that still acknowledges her as making decisions.

People don't just have opinions because somebody tells them to have them - how would new opinions ever get started this way?

You can see that Rhea is, if not a tyrant, then at least a grossly negligent incompetent ruler just by playing White Clouds with open eyes and ears.

& it's not just Edelgard who thinks that.

Rhea herself says she is the de-facto ruler ("I have only been ruling this wayward land in your stead")

Claude blames the church for the state of fodlan, he just takes it over via intrigue & manipulation cause that is what makes sense for his skillset, principles and the alliance's political situation.

In White Clouds alone you put down several rebellions. Rhea's regime is just objectively inefficient & unpopular; Edelgard is just a rebel who happens to have a lot of funds and soldiers at her disposal; It was kind of inevitable that one would eventually arise with such widespread levels of dissatisfaction.

& if we want to talk about who she blames most of her rhetorical vitriol is on the human collaborators, the nobles.

But she's not really driven by "blame" or "hate" - to the point where she'll consider an alliance of convenience with her most hated enemies (delaying/suppressing her feelings rather than indulgently following them) & is usually content with just jailing or dethroning even her worst enemies.

Which isn't to say that Edelgard is always perfectly rational or never affected by her negative experiences - this shows in her secretiveness for example or her categorical refusal to be captured alive; But that doesn't mean she's completely incapable of making any logical decision whatsover.

Perfect objectivity is no more achievable than, say, perfect love or perfect justice, but that doesn't mean that anyone who genuinely tries hard to pursue it in a self-aware manner is instantly a hypocrite the moment they don't 100% live up to it.

You can certainly fault anyone who just claims they have it all figured out & can never be questioned, but that's not at all what Edelgard does - all her supports show her as someone who questions herself a lot & is always willing to learn from others & this is honestly one of my favorite traits of hers.

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

[butwhatifidothis]

For a change of pace I’m going to actually say something nice about a character, and that’s Claude (under the cut cuz it got a bit long and I remember!! that’s a fucking thing you can do lmaooo).

Like, there’s honestly a lot to this character that I find very striking and sadly gets overlooked in favor of either making him a complete joke or a complete/near complete sociopath. I like that Claude initially believes himself to be this beacon of hope to this silly land of Fodlan because of his view as an outsider... and then realizing and acknowledging he’s not, that while an outsider’s perspective takes away the bias of growing up steeped in certain ways it also leaves holes that he just can’t catch without someone showing him due to his ignorance of said culture. He thinks he has Cyril and Rhea pinned down to rights because of course he would, why wouldn’t he... and then he actually talks to them and is shown wrong, and he listens! With Cyril he likes being shown the truth even if it means it puts him and his previous beliefs in a nonperfect light! With Rhea he doesn’t just reject her words even though they blow a giant hole in what he thought of her for the vast majority of the game!

And the way his trust issues are handled, while I do think could have been dealt with better had the route focused on his character more, I still absolutely love it. It’s so subtle but consistent throughout pre ts/post ts VW, how often he “makes sure” the Golden Deer are by his side, how he always has to find the “right time” to reveal his plans to them because he genuinely thinks they won’t trust or believe in him, how he genuinely thought that Hilda and Judith would abandon him if things got too dangerous for them personally (in AM for Judith, Hilda for both CF and AM), how you never really get Claude’s full story anywhere even in the end or the S support (almost like that’s a big source of trauma for him and he’s a secretive guy because of that trauma that doesn’t magically stop being a thing because you wanna kiss him! Congrats IntSys for once you managed to get something kinda right!), how even something like you calling him a stalwart ally is responded with a wink and a deflection saying that you’re just flattering him (because you can’t actually believe he’s a good ally too, right?), but then you see him actually trust someone and oh. Oh man. The difference is night and day. How he pleads with Dimitri to stop fighting and join forces in both AM and VW despite Dimitri being off the fucking walls at the time, how he honestly believed that Dimitri would not only recover from his madness but still come to his aid in AM, hell even in CF he honestly believes that there’s no way Byleth would kill him despite them deliberately forcing the Alliance into the war by invading them, shown by his shock and hurt if you actually do - Claude puts his trust in few people but when he does he does and that’s honestly so indicative of how drastic his trust issues affect him.

You see that growth more blatantly in his supports as well - compare how worriedly Claude deflects Hilda’s observation about his knowledge of how Almyrans see the Gonerils pre ts to him inviting her to meet his parents post ts. Similar with Leonie, how he offers to take her to his homeland, something pre ts Claude would never dream of. 

And then there’s his empathy and compassion! Like often he’s very careless when it comes to trying to discover the truth yes, but when he sees there’s a line he’s going to cross if he does? He steps back, always. His supports with Marianne show this amazingly, with him thoughtlessly stepping on her insecurities, trying to apologize and make her feel better but failing, and then ending with him opening up to her about his own life - something he very, very rarely does - to make her feel less alone with her struggles. His ones with Flayn even say straight up that he dislike forcing secrets out of people, and when he says he’ll give up trying to get Flayn to talk herself... he does. Legitimately. Afterwards he just spitballs theories to her. Even when he sees he’s hitting close to home when he correctly guesses Flayn and Seteth’s relationship he doesn’t push farther than that despite the huge implications of what that means. And this “I don’t like to force secrets out of people” line is backed up by you losing support points with him if you try to dig at Flayn after Remire.

And we know that Claude doesn’t immediately think of the commonfolk in his dream via his supports with Cyril, but damn, when they’re in front of him, when they’re directly in his care? Claude arguably goes the farthest of the three lords to portect them. Mr. “Tactical Retreat” suddenly puts himself in direct danger by painting himself as a prime target for the Empire to attack in AM and CF. He involves none of the other houses and tell his men to retreat should things get dangerous for them (as shown in explore dialogue with CF!Lysithea and what he says if Judith and Hilda die in AM/CF in their respective maps). He calls in the Almyran army in CF and on the Kingdom army in AM - forces with trained soldiers ready to fight, not civilians desperate to live. And speaking of civilians, he evacuates all of Derdriu’s civilians and closes down entry into Derdriu. Even with him planning on retreating himself should things go badly that takes some nards to go through with given how easily things can go badly for him should just about anything go awry; he goes the distance for those under his care.

And also how readily he offers his support and understanding to the more emotionally abused characters. Look at his talk with Dimitri during Golden Deer’s Plea, back at his supports with Marianne, how he sympathizes with Rhea - someone he actively disliked/distrusted for most of the game - once he hears her story.

And yo, man, his backstory? Imma be real, very rarely do I get invested in “racism bad” storylines because so often they fall into “white man bad POC good” black-and-white (lol) mentality, but this? I actually felt this. So rarely is a mixed race person’s perspective shown in regards to racism since it’s more complicated than “whitey bad POC good”. No, both have people in them that are raised with beliefs that breed racism. They’re not evil people, they’re a result of the culture that raised them, and that raised those that raised them, and so on and so forth. He gets that his dream is unrealistic and that it’d take a very, very long time to implement even if it did happen and even then would face extreme backlash from people from both sides, but he believes in this dream. It’s what lets him face on Edelgard in CF despite the insignificant chance he has of winning if he does so, what pushed him to go beyond his familiar home of Almyra into the completely unknown Fodlan, what drives him to aim for Almyra’s throne despite his position as the youngest prince (aka his weak connection compared to his half-brothers).

And like, Claude shares with Rhea in that IntSys dropped the ball on their characters anyway, despite how much thought was put into them. Rhea is stripped of damn near any agency in post ts, non-CF routes and Claude has noticeably less direct attention given to his upbringing compared to Edelgard and Dimitri (and small things like no appearance from either of his parents’, no child portrait, stuff like that). This is most likely due to their routes basically being copy-pastes of each other so it had to be compatible with both characters so both characters had to suffer for it. But like, for what we got? I still love it.

#Claude #claude von reigen #Claude (fire emblem) #gonna actually tag him since it's positive #more stuff I couldn't fit in the post itself: #i personally acknowledge Dimitri and Rhea to be better written characters than Claude but just something about him had me connect to him mor #though I still do love Dimitri and Rhea don't get me wrong lol #And furthermore on the point with Claude and Rhea #he almost sounds like he doesn't want to get to truth from Rhea when she's at her deathbed #and only does so because the truth NEEDS to be known by someone and only Rhea has that truth #shown by how his first words to her when they meet for the last time is him apologizing #and interestingly Rhea says that she's happy to see the ''two'' of them #them being Claude and Byleth #just find it interesting how she says that specifically #like you'd think she'd be wary if anything towards Claude given his outburst the last time they talked privately #but by the last talk it looks like things like... actually improved between the two of them? #like not sure if ''respect'' is the right word but there's noticeably less tension in the air #and in fact there's that lessened tension in all the moments after Claude initially yells at her and she reveals some of the truth #and also you gain support points with Claude if you say you should let Rhea rest after rescuing her #which despite him saying ''Sadly I agree'' tells a lot about him cuz IntSys could have just made THAT the option you gain nothing with #or just have it join the endless dialogue branches that have both/all options do nothing to support points #if it really meant nothing kwim #loooon ass tag list but had a bit to say that I couldn't fit lmaooo