#〈 lysithea 〉 isms.

[atvrvxia]

💖✏️🍧 - thea

𝐎𝐂 𝐄𝐌𝐎𝐉𝐈 𝐀𝐒𝐊𝐒!

💖 SPARKLING HEART - are they a subtle or a showy lover?

definitely subtle. thea's never really the show-off type of girl and even though she's confident and outgoing, she's a little shy when it comes to affection.

✏️ PENCIL - is there a particular quote / lyric that you associate with them?

yes! from agnes varda's uncle yanco: "it's important to always be by the sea. the sea is an element of love. the greeks say so. aphrodite emerged from the water." thea is a surfer girl, sure. but she's also full of love, so it's very fitting for someone like her.

🍧 SHAVED ICE - do they still have any objects from their childhood? what significance does it have to them? what would their reaction be if they lost it?

yes. thea still has a gold medal from a surfing competition that her mother had given her before their family became broken. it's the one connection thea has to her mother; surfing. she doesn't remember much about her mom, since their dad took them away from her at a very young age. if she lost it, she would be inconsolable. she wanted to believe that she had at least one parent who genuinely loved her and cared, and to lose that connection to her mom would just absolutely wreck her.

[emblemxeno]

I played Fates long after its release and I was pretty neutral thowards it overall despite hearing many bad things about it. Then I played 3h on release right after finishing Fates and aside from AM 3h was so much worse than Fates. Everything people complained about when it came to Fates is far more prevalent in 3h. Terrible anime-tropey characters, annoying and repetitive supports, story has several blatant plotholes, waifu-ism and player pandering, characters literally betray their family 1/2

and home for the MC that they've known for less than a year (unlike Fates where characters manage to display some actual loyalty), the few same-sex options include a literal serial killer with 'hunting grounds' and a loli dragon, etc. But everyone was praising 3h and saying it was so much better than Fates, and me who played 3h directly after finishing Fates was just ????? excuse me ???? 2/2

It's so crazy. And touching on the supports thing specifically, people always said Fates (and Awakening by extension) doesn't have any depth with its supports, it just relies on anime tropes and characters speaking their gimmicks at each other. And I would never deny that things can get a little same-y on the surface level, cuz it's difficult to write supports for so many possible marriage combinations.

But man. Man. At least Fates gave us different scenarios each time. Setsuna may be pretty one note, but her clumsiness and genuine inability to detect sarcasm is used in different ways each time. The punchline may be the same, but her support with Saizo is not the same as it is with Azama. Charlotte is the same, she may be trying to get suitors in lots of supports, but the point of the support is different between say, Corrin and Kaze.

I just... don't feel that way about 3H's cast somehow. Dorothea's supports with Ferdie, Sylvain, and Lorenz for example all feel like painting a picture with the same paint, just with slightly different brushes; that's how familiar each scenario feels. Lysithea is in a similar boat. Hell, even Felix can ring those kinds of bells. It's like, in an effort to tackle more "serious" subject matter more often, they shrink the amount of actual unique conversation matter in such a way that things can feel stale.

[kendrixtermina]

Sorry but hearing ppl say “I would like CF more if Edelgard was either treated like a full-on villain or as a manipulated groomed victim of TWSITD who had no choice” and just generally seeing ppl trying to shoehorn her into one of those two takes,  it’s hard not to think the words “Madonna Whore complex”

I kinda abhorr the latter more than the former (Not the crowd calling her Hitler and clown-emojis, but I’ll take someone who considers something she actually did a moral dealbreaker over someone who defends her because “she’s just lashing out cause she’s traumatized”.. That’s Dimitri. you’re describing Dimitri.) because it goes against everything her character is about, which is mostly: 

a) A tendency to think in the big picture, focussed on mainly the end result, especially on the temporal axis (”The nobility system has only existed for 1400 years”, “This is all part of the ebb and flow of history”, “This is the path that leads to the least casualties in the long run”)

She’s always playing the long game - so dealing with the Agarthans later (once the church is taken care of) is the same as dealing with them now. She never went against the church instead of them, she’s playing them against each other. 

b) A rejection of tradition as a reason to keep things the way they are

c) An emphasis on self-reliance and proactivity instead of surrendering yourself to your circumstances. See the speeches she gives to Petra and Lysithea. 

She generally believes in ppl’s agency, she gives everyone an out, and likewise her generals and the non-recruited ppl are all shown as believing in her cause (Something even Seteth notes) - they’re fighting to abolish hereditary Feudalism and clamp down on corruption. You’re fighting a bunch of people who wanna abolish Feudalism and Theocracy. 

Claude wants the same but he’s hiding it because he thinks he can avoid confrontations that way (There’s pros and cons to both their approaches, and I’m not saying that Dimitri or Seteth are bad, either, especially not in the context of the world they live in) 

She’s basically a Nietzschean Superman but in the original sense not the cheap bastardized version mixed up with pseudoscientific misunderstandings of evolution: Someone who proactively lives according to their own beliefs regardless of the mainsteam in greater society. 

And herein lies another factor, I think,like I’ve often noticed a tendency in modern fandom that people can’t seem to emphasize with anyone who isn’t in some way marked as an underdog -  Leading ppl to argue that characters who are definitely not underdogs like , say, Tony Stark, are definitely underdogs. 

Of course in reality things aren’t so simple that you could make a clean split into “underdogs” and “not underdogs” - Some ppl clearly demonstrably have it harder than others but ppl can have it hard in one way and have it easy in others. (Dimitri clearly struggles alot  - but he’s also a king. One doesn’t negate the other.)

There’s nothing wrong with underdog stories, they can be very inspiring and cathartic - but they shouldn’t be the only kinds of stories. 

Even the most powerful  can see themselves as victims because we’re all just squishy meatsacks who can still be hurt, and even the most powerless might see themselves as in-control if that helps them feel better. 

It also goes into the trolley problem and the human illogical tendency to view harm done through action as heavier than harm done through inaction. A tendency to not want to rock the boat, to confuse stability with peace. 

There’s no difference between harm done through action vs inaction. 

It���s at best, a failure of object permanence - to understand that things still happen and change even if you dont act  - and at worst selfish pride and ego (I want to keep MY hands clean I don’t care if people are suffering and dying as long as no one can say it’s my fault... the counterproductive puritanical idea of morality as “good person vs bad person”)

This leads to this attitude where if they can think of someone as a “victim” then it doesn’t matter what they do, because, after all, it was just circumstance, but the moment someone makes an active, deliberate choice, all empathy goes out the window and they’re held to some impossible standard. 

For the opposite extreme, see Dimitri (mind you I’m not saying he should be judged either im saying that mindlessly hating both is equally nonsensical... the dimitri haters are fewer but they do exist), or worse, Rhea... who regardless of her backstory has objectively been in a position of power and privilege for a literal thousand years.  You know Dedue and Seteth are right there? )

Something similar is to be said about ppl who call “bad writing��� or “waifu-ism”, or consider her a “manchild” because she... opens up around people she trusts? Expresses relief when an ally validates her in a moment of self-doubt? Gets into comical situations in everyday life? That’s just kinda consequence of living in close-quarters with her. 

“How dare you not fit into “misguided victim” vs “ridiculous bitch” dichotomy don’t remind me that some character I don’t like is a human being” 

They pressed that any deviation from that is “ridiculous” or “extreme”. Tell me again that someone who’s consistently calm, collected and intellectually-inclined is a “manchild” for telling her closest ally that she would like to take a day off sometimes and liking stuffed animals.

I for once really like that she’s tough and proactive and makes decisions that really impact the plot without being a flat over the top amazonian stock character with no emotion other than “grrr! men dumb” which is then never taken seriously as a threat. 

Actually this part alone would not even preclude her from being a victim even Osama Bin Laden had a favorite color and liked disney movies. Hitler liked his dog. Stating this is just acknowledging simple facts, not saying that you should have sympathy for them (which for the record, you shouldn’t) - I think a work geared at ppl over 15 shouldn’t have to explicitly remind you that “this is an evil person” every time one shows up, people can distinguish for themselves, and those who can’t won’t be convinced by a video game. No one can “make” you like or empathize with a fictional chracter peeps. 

[gascon-en-exil]

I really don't understand Edelgard at all, and why people think she's a well written character. I'm trying to understand, but her motivations are all over the place. She's ok with religion because she allows faith in CF, but says she hates it in her support with Lysithea and wants to obliterate it? She feels inconsistent but people seem to think she's a gift to us all.

Edelgard is very inconsistently written, and to get to the heart of what she actually wants (at least as far as I can determine) you have to cut through something like 3-4 layers of deliberate misdirection and figure out who’s responsible for what in CF. Claude is just as vague when it comes to his real motivations and even more obvious about his manipulation of Byleth, but at least he has a concise philosophical stance (fix racism) that he attempts to enact through recognizable means (control as much of the world as possible, by whatever means necessary, and open the borders). Edelgard doesn’t do much of anything for me personally so I’m not the best one to ask about what anyone sees in her. Other bloggers have laid out what are probably the biggest factors:

She’s a female ruler, and a “strong” female protagonist if you ignore that just about everything she does either couldn’t have been done without or was done to appease one of Hubert, Thales, or the potentially male Byleth.

She’s bisexual, in the sense that she can S rank Byleth which apparently counts for more than Dimitri having two deeply romantic endings with other men. Representation only counts when it’s your self-insert doing it?

Edelgard was the most prominent of the house leaders in promotional material, and the game in general seems to slightly favor her perspective, ex. “Edge of Dawn” is her song, she has the most strongly telegraphed romance with Byleth of the house leaders. That she’s also the main antagonist for 3/4ths of the game doesn’t sit well with this kind of favoritism.

She opposes the church, which is a common trope in JRPGs as well as a popular sentiment in younger/left-leaning online spaces that are generally opposed to organized religion. Her claims in CF that she only hates the church but not the Seiros faith itself align with anyone describing themselves as “spiritual, not religious” which is apparently fashionable in some circles...but then she calls Sothis a false goddess so who knows.

Related, she wants to kill all the dragons, which is par for the course in FE. Most recently, all three 3DS games end with killing an evil/insane dragon. Whether this counts as racism/species-ism across the entire series has never been entirely clear or consistent.

Her desire to abolish the nobility and the Crest system looks like a revolutionary leftist position on paper, even if she doesn’t really follow it through in the end. Also, applying the logic of contemporary politics to a game series where a good and just monarchy restoring the status quo but better has always been the standard doesn’t work all that well, but that requires a broader knowledge of this series and its traditionally mildly reactionary political stances.

Similarly, parallels/allusions to Jugdral, conspicuous as they may be (ex. “the Flame Emperor”), don’t work when one isn’t familiar with the source material . In this case, said material is over two decades old and was never officially translated, so safe to say the references get lost on many fans. 

That’s about what I’ve been able to glean from the fandom as to why people are so into Edelgard and get so defensive about any criticisms of her.

[roundpi]

White washing is bad (obviously), but is erasing Lysithea's albino-ism just as bad?

Seeing a not-sickly-pale Lysithea would have been okay if her hair isn't still white. If melanin can reach her skin, why not the roots of her hair?

Or maybe I'm too attached to my headcanons... idk.

[flamespun]

tag drop: lysithea

[atvrvxia]

cressida evans, jordan valentine, lyle beaufort and lysithea mcnamara tag dump !!