#. ⊰ ❛ ʜᴇᴀᴠᴇɴ sʜᴀʟʟ ʀᴇᴍᴇᴍʙᴇʀ ᴛʜᴇ sɪʟᴇɴᴛ ᴀɴᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ʙʀᴀᴠᴇ ⊱ * meta — ✘

[wolfhednn]

ooc. felix’s line when you force him into choir is 

❝ Not sure I should sing with everyone. I'm not great at harmonizing. ❞

regular rai brain: oh it’s intsys again emphasizing his whole ‘lone wolf’ persona thing

galaxy rai brain: from experience, people with voices that don’t blend well with others are usually that way because their singing voice is really distinctive and they make good soloists......

3 minutes before i get slammed with students and i’m contemplating felix with a surprisingly nice but unpolished tenor 2-bass range...

[wolfhednn]

modern!au gamer!felix agenda

ooc. no, i haven’t been building gamer!felix headcanons with @gallantgautier for months centered around felix being a professional moba player i have no idea what you’re talking about.

( i spend way too much time thinking about felix and glenn and what they would play in OA [ onmyoji arena, the only moba i know ]. nerdiness incoming under the cut. )

felix definitely grew up watching glenn play video games, mobas especially. both brothers are highly competitive, so naturally extroverted and charismatic glenn would have gravitated towards online multi-players. both brothers are also very skilled at video games, though i think in both talent and because his passion exceeds even his brother’s as he gets older, felix is better. glenn is good at video games but generally plays them pretty casually. felix is good at video games and plays them like it’s a career lkmsjdfh

as a child and into his early teens, felix watched glenn throughout his stints in a variety of mobas, definitely league and dota, aov, hots, and probably several others too. he always enjoyed watching glenn play, and was just mesmerized every time. soon, he started playing as well when he was old enough, and glenn showed him the ropes and often played with him.

as glenn went to college and they started having less time to play together, felix just began playing on his own.

so let’s talk about OA. rubs hands together

felix

in the absence of any other mobas that i actually know, and provided that OA was big enough to have a strong e-sports presence like LoL, felix would totally play it competitively.

when felix started out playing OA ( and mobas ), he actually started out playing adc. because of course felix is going to go for the dps roles. in fact, for a long time at the beginning, he mained kanko because he was easy to start out with, and probably just because he liked his design. eventually, he moved onto other adc’s, and doesn’t play kanko as much anymore. more on that later.

eventually, felix became a jungler main, which is the role he plays professionally and most of the time in his games overall. his main shikigami is yamakaze because... he’s basically an edgier demon felix and he really likes his design. also dual-wielding swords. also he’s considered to be one of the technically hardest shikigami in the game, and felix welcomed the challenge of mastering a character with such a high ( but rewarding ) skill ceiling. yamakaze is very easy to play poorly, and very hard to play well, but also one of the most devastating junglers in the game if played well, so felix also sees his dominance with him as a mark of his own ability.

he definitely has supreme mastery with yamakaze and uses him for like 70% of his serious matches. i’m not saying felix is annoyed that he still doesn’t have any skins, but i’m saying he’s grumbly about it.

his secondary jungler main is mannendake, and depending on the matchup of the rest of his team and the enemy team, he occasionally decides to use him instead. most of the time, he just uses his evolved skin, but he also tosses on nightwalker sometimes.

for serious / professional matches, felix mostly uses one of these two. but he’s dabbled in every jungler shiki, with yuki being one he likes to play around with in casual matches when he’s playing with glenn and the others from time to time. he also likes hone onna and ubume ( of course he owns ubume’s golden crane skin. don’t ask him how he got it. )

felix’s secondary role, which he never plays for professional matches with his actual team since jungler is his role, but which he’ll play with friends or when he’s playing for fun to relax, is adc. 

since this was where he started, sometimes he goes back to it for nostalgia, and because it’s still dps. his adc main is kubinashi, picked for design alone, though he also enjoys playing chin due to her bursty kit and high ambush potential being very similar to playing jungler. and yeah, sometimes he jungles with her for the shiggles. on rare occasions when sylvain is playing with him and insists, felix will bring out kanko again, equipped with the bamboo kitsune skin because sylvain thinks it’s cute af.

though he doesn’t play them unless for some reason he has to, felix can pull off the other roles if needed in a pinch, such as if he’s filling in a casual match or playing with friends. he’s better at mage than he is at tank or support, the latter two being roles he pretty much never plays and would readily admit to sucking at.

glenn

the origin of felix’s love for games, glenn still plays semi-regularly, but usually only as a bonding thing with felix.

glenn is a strict mage main. he downright refuses to play anything else lkjhsdjfh. on the occasions he’s kicked out of midlane in character selection, he’s that guy who just opts to play mage for toplane or support. fortunately... he’s good enough that it usually works.

glenn doesn’t really have a main shikigami, as he likes a lot of the mages and tends to swap around depending on who he’s feeling, but his most-played is in fact lord arakawa, who he usually plays in toplane rather than mid. he’s a goddamn menace with arakawa ( and rai cries ). and yeah you bet he bought that new demonic series skin for him.

other mages he plays regularly are higanbana and oitsuki ( "she’s hot / cute!” ), shiro mujou, shiro, and, ever since he trashily insta-bought her teacher skin because it was hot, enenra. he’s dabbled in all the mages though since he won’t play any other role, but those are the ones he uses consistently. he likes aoandon’s design a lot but doesn’t like that she plays more like an adc. he’s still sad about it cause she’s hot, too. thanks, glenn.

other tidbits

— felix travels for his moba tournaments periodically, and he takes them very seriously. i’m not saying he’d definitely be the guy to get a moba scholarship for college, but he would. he’s been saving all the prize money he gets to help pay his way through college.

— in his spare time, he has a youtube channel where he streams some of his matches and posts gameplay videos of newly released shikigami. he takes requests for showcase videos from his followers, especially if they’re for jungler shikigami.

— despite being highly competitive, felix is a good sport. he sometimes gets frustrated during matches when things aren’t going well, but it's never personal. once a match is over, it’s over, and it’s like water off a duck’s back. he’ll readily admit to when he’s been outplayed, and respects other skilled players. he’ll frequently friend the people who beat him in-game, so he can play with or against them again sometime.

— likewise, toxicity and flaming from other players doesn’t get to him. let them say what they want about him; he doesn’t answer to them. all that matters is improving himself and getting better.

— though he uses the voice chat when playing and doesn’t bother muting the in-game chat, he doesn’t have much of a presence on either. he usually just uses the ping commands to communicate with his teammates in any case, and his professional teammates know his playstyle well enough that even those aren’t often needed. when he does speak up, it’s usually in brief communications that can’t be conveyed through pings: “enemy’s behind you”, “keep them distracted”, “i’ll cover top”, etc, and he’s silent otherwise. he only uses the in-game chat for a short ‘gg’ at the end of games.

— because of the above point and the fact that his aforementioned showcases / streams don’t have any commentary, written or spoken, he’s gained something of a reputation for being ‘silent and mysterious’ within the game’s community, a reputation he doesn’t actively try to build but which he doesn’t mind either. it helps with his image as a jungler.

[wolfhednn]

— character chart pt. 5

the fifth installment!

PRESENT ( for the purposes of toa, this will also include timeskip where applicable )

CURRENT LOCATION garreg mach monastery. he spends the large majority of his time in the lower grounds, rarely — if ever — venturing up to the cathedral unless required to. generally speaking, he wears out the same paths between his room, the dining hall, his classroom, and the training grounds. finding him anywhere else is something of a rarity unless he’s been assigned chores. when in doubt, look in the training grounds.

AM — duke felix fraldarius. spends his time at glasagwyn if he’s not needed somewhere else. CF — uhhh. dead. VW / SS — can see it going either duke ending or mercenary ending due to how i’ve set up my verses, canon be damned. in the latter case, likely to be found wherever there’s fighting happening.

CURRENTLY LIVING WITH the other students at the academy. otherwise, on his own ( with glasagwyn staff, as duke ) for the most part.

PETS none currently. 

duke felix fraldarius loosely cares for about a dozen cats in and around his estate ( most of them are directly tended to by the servants ). at any given time, however, usually one or two of those are his cats, who he handles entirely himself. ( his favorite, if you will. ) meeko, a big fluffy tabby who definitely has norwegian forest in her, is the most prominent of these. though he wouldn’t consider them pets, the estate also manages a retinue of horses and pegasi. his wartime pegasus, kyphon, is enjoying a well-earned retirement, and his current war pegasus is named sainglend.

RELIGION as ambivalent about it as ever, in timeskip, felix attends to religious duties as is required of the duke fraldarius, but not generally beyond that. he’s criticized by some for being notably less pious than his father was, given faerghus’ strongly faithful culture, but his generation tends to share that quality overall, so it’s mostly the older advisors who frown at him for it. he doesn’t shirk his duties, however, so nobody can really get on him for doing exactly as much as is needed.

OCCUPATION student, duke fraldarius, or mercenary, depending on which verse we’re looking at.

FINANCES well off. he’s never struggled with finances, even taking into account faerghus’ comparative lack of resources. fraldarius has always been one of the most affluent territories in the kingdom. felix is also very good at handling money and surprisingly adept at state management, strategic at allocating both funds and efforts. his more domestically-focused and, at times, aggressive policies in comparison to those of his father often pay off, and the territory ( canonically ) sees restoration and prosperity under his governance.

FAMILY

MOTHER ghislaine alys fraldarius

RELATIONSHIP WITH HER his mother died shortly after he turned three, and so felix doesn’t have any memories of her. aside from paintings, he doesn’t recall what she looks like. rodrigue has mentioned her sparingly over the years, but has never talked about her in depth with felix, and their relationship soured too early for felix to have asked since. once or twice, he’d asked glenn about her, to which glenn offered some memories and a bit of insight into what kind of person she had been, but they were little more than isolated snapshots and impressions, since he was nine when she died.

FATHER rodrigue achille fraldarius

RELATIONSHIP WITH HIM clearly, not great. felix’s relationship with rodrigue is highly complex. he grew up admiring and loving him, but seeing him largely as a firm, though warm, authority figure. he figured he was indomitable, and to an extent still unconsciously views him as such. obviously, their relationship is very strained currently, and continues to be into timeskip. if asked, felix will only admit to it coming down to an irreconciliable difference in values and leave it at that. 

in reality, there’s a lot more to it, including resentment born from abandonment in the wake of the tragedy of duscur. i do headcanon that, in his preoccupation with his promise to lambert ( and also because of the stress of his deteriorating relationship with felix ), rodrigue was more of a father to dimitri post-duscur than he was to felix. i also headcanon that glenn was always, however subconsciously and unintentionally, his favored child, and he began to scold felix by constantly comparing him to his brother. this continues into present day during the academy years. it doesn’t help, though, that felix also lets his resentment color all his interactions with his father rather than attempting to seek any kind of reconciliation.

there’s also that tasty line from rodrigue in AM in the late-night scene with byleth:

After [the tragedy of duscur] happened, I said something horrible to Felix. He’s hated me ever since... and I don’t blame him.

the game never tells us what this was, and i have thoughts... but they’re sikrit hehehehe...

SIBLINGS glenn leo fraldarius, older brother ( deceased )

RELATIONSHIP WITH THEM very close. as i’ve mentioned before, glenn was felix’s hero growing up, as he was for many others. but more than that, he was an older brother who read to him almost every night, joked around him with all the time, taught him how to fight, and whose actions and words have influenced most of felix’s beliefs and identity. he always knew he could rely on glenn dropping everything unquestioningly to be there for him if he needed it. now that he’s older, he definitely recognizes where glenn’s flaws were, but that doesn’t change that he was the single most foundational person in his life, and that they shared an incredibly close bond despite the 6 year age difference.

SPOUSE sylvain jose gautier fdgsjdkjfh did we ever decide if they were actually going to make it official or not??

RELATIONSHIP WITH THEM in the absence of anything canon, and for the sake of toa-canon, we’re going to put sylvain here LKMKJDH. their dynamic should already be self-explanatory haha glance at any of our 87342 threads... cat and dog romance. sylvain is Whipped for that fraldarius. felix will die before he admits that he’s fond of sylvain and wouldn’t trade him for the world. ( he’s mad at me already for typing that. ) i’ll throw this here as the perfect depiction of their life before running away from my muse.

CHILDREN none technically

RELATIONSHIP WITH THEM felix has no interest in having kids and never pursues any of his own, whether biological or adoptive. as he gets into his later years, however, and concern about inheritance mounts in the absence of any known relatives, felix goes in search of someone, regardless of bloodline or social class, who upholds the tenets of what it means to be a fraldarius, and inducts them formally as the heir to his house ( sort of a la ashe ). it’s a highly controversial move, but felix remains steadfast in his stance in the face of any opposition. though he initially intends for his relationship with the child ( who would likely be older, around 8-13 ) to be strictly that of a duke and his successor, he eventually can’t help himself from becoming something of a parent to them anyway.

OTHER FAMILY MEMBERS he considers every one of those ~dozen cats to be family and would unhesitatingly run back into a burning glasagwyn to rescue any of them, much to the horror of his retainers.

[wolfhednn]

ooc. remember how i said a while back that the rockruff line would be felix’s perfect link pokemon?

i lied. it’s the rookidee line. analysis under the cut for SWSH spoilers ( only for dex entries; nothing about plot or the game itself ).

rookidee

Sword: It will bravely challenge any opponent, no matter how powerful. This Pokémon benefits from every battle. Even a defeat increases its strength a bit.

the entry that got me thinking. it should be self-explanatory in felix’s case why this fits him so well, since it directly matches his mentality of self-improvement. he’s always looking for worthy opponents to test himself against: the stronger, the better, because he doesn’t find any worth in fighting people he can easily defeat. you don’t get better through easy wins. it’s through challenging fights and even losses that one finds ways to improve.

it works because this was an attitude instilled in him at a very young age, as he continuously lost to glenn during their sparring matches. though frustrated, he never saw this as a setback, but rather ongoing opportunities to get even stronger until he could one day beat him. due to glenn, felix as a child never learned to see strong opponents as roadblocks, only as stepping stones for his own growth.

Shield:  Jumping nimbly about, this small-bodied Pokémon takes advantage of even the slightest opportunity to disorient larger opponents.

i haven’t written too extensively about this yet, but felix’s focus on speed has a lot to do with him being of smaller stature and slimmer build than many men. it runs in the family, as i’ve mentioned in previous metas — all of the fraldariuses are noodles to varying extents ( and felix, like his dad, is actually on the more filled out side of the family genes ). he balances the lack of height and bulk with lightning-fast agility and precision, and his strength doesn’t suffer for it either, if his second-highest-STR-growth-in-the-game is any indication.

he’s all about evading attacks, never letting his usually larger opponents land a hit, letting them tire themselves out trying to overwhelm him with strength alone and then taking “advantage of even the slightest opportunity” to incapacitate them.

corvisquire

Sword: The lessons of many harsh battles have taught it how to accurately judge an opponent's strength.

again, pretty self-explanatory. felix “i fight and grow stronger. only natural.” hugo fraldarius is good at gauging where an opponent’s strengths and weaknesses are because he’s so experienced on the battlefield. he’s also pretty good at gauging his own for the same reason. this can be seen throughout his dialogue where he aptly identifies his own talents and deficiencies, and he’s confident about his abilities to do the same in others.

Shield: Smart enough to use tools in battle, these Pokémon have been seen picking up rocks and flinging them or using ropes to wrap up enemies.

at first glance, this doesn’t seem as relevant, but it speaks a lot to felix’s belief that, in order to be a truly skilled warrior, one can’t just rely on traditional tactics; one has to fight smart as well as hard in order to best a powerful enemy. warriors have to think outside the box, even if it means using underhanded strategies. whatever gets them the victory. this gets brought up consistently in his dialogue:

Byleth B:  No. Knights ought to have some hunger. I’ve always thought so. They depend too much on their swords. Only when they’re wrested away do knights consider their hands and feet as weapons. That’s not how it was for warriors of old. They weren’t limited by their tools. Victory is what matters, not the method of achieving it. That’s the attitude to adopt.

Ingrid C: Successful armies must be able to handle unexpected situations. That starts with weapon mastery and creative tactics.

Leonie A:  I agree. A warrior can’t stick too closely to predefined tactics. [ ... ]  I still have much to learn. Not only about swordplay, but also about thinking on my feet.

Goddess Tower: I pledge that someday, I will surpass you. I’ll surpass your technique, your skill with the sword, and your cunning as a warrior. ( emphasis mine )

CF 14 Monastery Line: I hear Claude’s earned himself a rather colorful nickname. He does whatever it takes to win. I like that.

corviknight

Sword: This Pokémon reigns supreme in the skies of the Galar region. The black luster of its steel body could drive terror into the heart of any foe.

i’m gonna point to excerpts from a couple of his non-AM mercenary endings:

“... Little is known of his whereabouts thereafter, but even many years later, soldiers continued to whisper rumors of a mysterious man able to deal swift death to scores of enemies.”

“... tales of a swordsman who made warriors across Fódlan tremble with fear...”

bonus!

more than once, @gallantgautier has described felix’s hair as being “crow-feathered” in both color and texture. foreshadowing, man.

[wolfhednn]

💫

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��� caught in this wicked game, we know that nothing stays the same. ❜

                                — mad world, within temptation

ooc. this is my CF!felix song, so i’m morally obligated to do CF meta. i’ve talked before about how felix is hilariously out of touch with his own emotions. he’s pretty emotionally perceptive of others, but has a lot of trouble parsing through and unpacking his own feelings about things, which is the root behind a lot of his maladaptive communication habits.

in CF, this already-prominent area of weakness becomes a lot worse. because he’s still ultimately a person who feels deeply, felix bottled up and shut down his emotions just about completely in order to pursue the path he had set himself on and achieve his goal. he knew that if he let his emotions get in the way, he would waver, and he refuses to turn back.

as a result, felix’s disconnect from his emotions in CF grows to a point where he has distinctive trouble actually feeling them, himself. ( there’s already some evidence in non-CF that felix tends to map his emotions onto external stimulus rather than own them as coming from himself, but in CF, this goes from a habit he’d developed to seem ‘ tough ’ to something that’s now reality for him. )

Felix: Since I allied with you and the emperor, my resolve has never wavered. I abandoned my country. I am prepared to kill my father, and kill a man I once called my friend. Resolute as I am, my sword feels… heavy.

this comes from his monastery line during the arianrhod chapter, and it’s notable that the only thing he can register emotionally is that his sword feels heavy, not what that sensation actually represents. he’s so out of touch with his emotions that he pretty much doesn’t have them anymore.

i do hc that in a CF route where sylvain and ingrid aren’t recruited, if he were to kill them, he doesn’t cry. in some ways, that disturbs him more than the fact that he actually killed them.

bonus: CF!felix never intends to live past the war. he’s not necessarily suicidal, but he just doesn’t see himself as making it to see the future. he doesn’t see a place for what he’s become in a world without bloodshed.

Felix: For five years, I’ve fought for the Empire. I’ve cut down hordes of enemies. Now I have the same look in my eyes that the boar used to have in his. The look of a savage beast who loves nothing but destruction and violence. 

[ You’re right. ] Hmph. I can hardly hold it against him anymore.[ I don’t see it. ] I hope not. 

You and Edelgard must not disappoint me. Mark my words. The future you’re building had better be worth all this bloodshed. ( italics for emphasis )

i think those last lines are indicative of the mindset of someone who doesn’t see themselves as living to see that future take shape.

[wolfhednn]

💫! :0)

send 💫 for a shuffle-generated meta | @cynthero

❛ it’s a bit dangerous, but i’m so sweet. i’m here to save you, i’m here to ruin you ❜

                                  — pied piper, bts

ooc. catch me sitting here crying because nothing about this song has anything to do with felix kjhskjdhf

eventually i decided that this might be an appropriate time to talk about The Elephant in the Room™ wrt felix; that is to say, the ‘ go find a husband ’ line in his ingrid B support that everyone whips out to attest that he’s a misogynist, which i argue is unfair to felix because it ignores the context of the comment and the history that the two share.

as a disclaimer yes, the line is a cruel and deliberately inflammatory one; felix does not often, contrary to how he seems, say things to needle people. this, i think, is one of the only occasions where he does. is it insensitive, and could he have worded it better? lmao absolutely. but, as we see from many of his lines, felix is poor at expressing his emotions and ideas in ways that don’t come across incendiary or critical. that does not mean, however, that he’s saying it because he hates women or something.

in order to explain why this line is not coming from a misogynistic place, we need to first consider felix and ingrid’s history. they are childhood friends, and ingrid had been betrothed to felix’s brother, glenn, from birth. it’s reasonable to assume that felix and ingrid were very close — the whole of the childhood friend quartet was, and felix would have seen that, in the last year before glenn’s death, ingrid and he had begun to truly fall in love beyond just their betrothal. besides himself and his father, felix anticipated that ingrid would be the person next most impacted by glenn’s death. he would have expected that she would be the one outside of his immediate family who would understand his feelings of loss the most.

after glenn’s death, ingrid goes into self-imposed isolation to grieve; we learn this from her support with sylvain. i don’t believe felix begrudged her this; after all, he was doing the same, and such a reaction isn’t unnatural. by the time she re-emerged, felix was already deep in the depths of resentment towards his father and faerghus society at large for devaluing his emotional reaction to glenn’s death ( see here ). i imagine that he would have subconsciously hoped that ingrid, of all people, would understand him.

instead, she starts saying the same things everyone else around him is. she, too, starts praising his death and talking about how she wants to emulate what he’d done. this inflicts a deep emotional wound on felix — not only does she, who had apparently loved glenn so much, give no indication that she wishes he had lived ( i know she does in other conversations, but felix never hears it; honestly, the two of them just really need to talk about their glenn feelings ), but it also sounds to him like ingrid is totally fine with following after glenn and dying too, for the sake of some ‘chivalric ideal’, leaving behind everyone else around her.

i think this sense of emotional betrayal is why we see the schism between them that we do in the game; it’s entirely one-sided, as well. ingrid harbors no bad feelings towards felix; it’s all him.

so what does this have to do with the B support line?

let’s look at the topic of their conversation in that support. they’re discussing an ethical situation surrounding the topic of chivalry. felix likely already anticipates what ingrid is going to say the moment he realizes what the subject is. ingrid goes on to do just that:

Ingrid: Whatever your personal feelings on the matter, I see similarities between such tactics and these “dumb” ethical questions. I haven’t read beyond this one, but I think the obvious answer is to follow your commander.

felix is of course unhappy about this answer. the crux of the tension in this conversation is felix’s underlying belief that, like everyone else in faerghus, ingrid doesn’t think for herself, but rather blindly follows the honor and chivalry script just because everyone else says it’s good. ( this is what he accuses her of in the end of the support: “At least I know not to heedlessly obey orders. I know not to romanticize blind obedience. My brother taught me to think for myself.” )

ingrid continues after felix’s silence, showing doubt in her ability to do what’s asked of her as a chivalrous knight:

Ingrid: The duty and pride of being a knight demand that you follow orders, regardless of your own feelings. But if I were put in such a position, I don’t know how I’d fare… In fact, were someone to carry out those orders, I know that I’d attempt to stop them.

felix sees her as still being preoccupied and obsessed with her idea of being a knight — that is, being able to follow a commander’s orders without question — instead of understanding that being a knight means using your own judgment to protect the people that depend on you. this is why his next words to her are so harsh: “You’re not meant to be a knight.”

so then, why “go find a husband”?

because where does ingrid’s imagined picture of the perfect knight come from? glenn. she says this outright in many of her supports — that glenn is the one she seeks to emulate, who embodies all the best qualities of a knight, who inspired her become one herself.

but in felix’s mind, ingrid is obsessed with what she thinks glenn was as a knight, not what he actually was — someone who was acting on his own beliefs, not blindly following the commands of a leader. in felix’s mind, she’s bound up in this debate with herself not because she wants to truly be a knight, but because it’s what glenn was.

hence, “go find a husband”. “go find someone else to put on a pedestal”. this has nothing to do with felix putting her down as a woman or pigeon-holing her into traditional feminine social roles. it’s coming from a place of harsh criticism for her lack of independent thought, and the way her attachment to glenn is coloring her ability to grow as a person.

[wolfhednn]

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❛ i’ll show you, i go for something completely different. a mic made with ivy and rough wood. there’s no sound that comes out at one try. ❜

                               — dionysus, bts

ooc. unexpectedly for someone with such a focus on the real and pragmatic, felix has a very healthy appreciation for the creative arts. ( ‘ the opera ’ being one of his preferred teatime topics, his evident interest in hearing that dorothea’s a singer. ) i think that vocal performance and theatre is his favorite, but he would be a supporter and consumer of any art: visual, musical, written, etc. 

the importance of the arts and their tie-in with real life was impressed upon him from a young age, as we know that glenn read stories to him very often as a child. i think in faerghus, as well, passing down lessons and memories through tales, especially written books, is emphasized in the culture.

contrary to what one might imagine, felix doesn’t see art and real life as being separate, or that art isn’t applicable, or a useless pastime. of course, he prefers those with a practical basis, that are accessible, but he’s appreciative of it in all its forms.

a lot of his penchant for the arts, too, comes from a feeling of kinship with those who practice it. even though he doesn’t have any particular talent in any of those fields ( despite having a pretty good voice, he’d be a terrible actor and wouldn’t be interested in pursuing anything to do with that, anyway ), he understands that art, like swordplay, is a technique that takes years of training, refining, and constant improvement. he admires someone with an artistic skill as much as he would a strong warrior.

[wolfhednn]

hotheadhero replied to your post:

So thorough! Though given the high level pegasus battalions come from Galatea, I wonder where they stand on that while thing. Too (resource) poor to help raise/train them, or is that where Fraldarius gets the pegasi, or…?

ooc. I’M GLAD YOU ASKED..........

i’m kidding.

but in honesty, i thought about that too. i just didn’t want to write it into the chart since galatea isn’t part of my city. but in the current absence of an ingrid ( down, muse. down, i say ), i can offer what i’ve headcanoned about it to fill the gap for the time being:

galatea territory is right below fraldarius’, and they weren’t one of the original faerghus houses. ingrid tells us that galatea is a branch of house daphnel that split off from them due to an inheritance dispute and joined the kingdom instead, forming a separate house and granted land and a title by the royal family. the land itself has nothing to offer, though, so much so that ingrid tells us that she grew up quite poor for a noble.

fraldarius territory is also the one closest to the alliance and daphnel lands ( i know there’s house charon; hold that thought, i’m getting there ), and i’ve always found it curious that house galatea, with no arable land, nothing to offer to the kingdom, and no crest-bearing children for generations ( as ingrid tells us ), hasn’t just collapsed entirely. i’ve also headcanoned before that pegasi are native to northern faerghus, specifically north/northeastern fraldarius territory ( in accordance with the fe tradition of pegasi being from the coldest regions ).

where am i going with this?

i’m saying ultimately that i don’t think count galatea’s move to marry ingrid to glenn was entirely a power move to make connections with the highest-ranking faerghus noble family. there was a history he was pulling on there, too.

originally, i think the land that is now galatea’s was fraldarius territory, which would put them along the alliance border along with house charon. as a house bordering the alliance and also the most closely trusted by the royal family, i feel that the fraldariuses likely played an instrumental role in supporting the galatea branch in their effort to split off from daphnel and join the kingdom. given that fhirdiad is a fair distance from the eastern border, i imagine the royal family likely entrusted the handling of that situation to house fraldarius. it was house fraldarius that offered immediate support and spearheaded negotiations. it’s never said whether the dispute became violent in nature at all, but if it did, it was likely house fraldarius that lended military aid.

a longstanding fraldarius-galatea friendship was born from this support, further strengthened by house fraldarius agreeing to cede part of their territory to the new countdom. they also knew that house galatea wouldn’t have much to their name, and so i imagine that they probably delegated the new house as the primary trainers for pegasi. they would send young foals down there to be readied for use, then have them sent back or delegated wherever was needed. in this way, house fraldarius would still be largely in charge of official pegasus stuff in the kingdom, but galatea would play a big part in that. i think it’s partially because of this that galatea became the locus of the kingdom pegasus corps over time, and this relationship still remains to this day.

( i also imagine it’s also partially genetic; i hardly think, given a long-standing political friendship, that glenn and ingrid were the first fraldarius-galatea pair. the penchant for pegasi likely migrated over to galatea genetics from the fraldarius side, tbh. )

through this responsiiblity-turned-niche granted to them by the fraldarius family, and also through their close tie with said family ( and probably others too, over time; it seems to me that galatea’s position in general heavily relies on forming connections with other nobles ), house galatea has then still been able to remain relevant enough to stay a countdom, even while lacking anything else politically worthwhile.

[wolfhednn]

give me some forbidden.... Crest of the Beast!Felix HCs

ooc. hee ho hey you sent this to me 1.5 months ago and i’m finally getting to it eyy.

so crest of the beast!felix hcs originate from his mom. there’s literally zero ( 0 ) information on lady fraldarius, not even a mention that she ever existed, so i decided to just go hog wild.

lady fraldarius was born ghislaine alys gloucester, a daughter of a small branch family of the main gloucester line. their family didn’t have much sway in politics, being quite removed from the line of gloucester succession and lacking a crest, but they were still part of the gloucester name.

at a young age, she was tested for a crest as all children were, and was found to bear a minor crest of the beast. the family was immediately in minor uproar. afraid that the unlucky crest would bring ruin to the gloucester family, they disowned her early on.

keeping a low profile, ghislaine grew up in the eastern church, out of the way and forgotten. as a young teenager however, she was adopted into another minor alliance noble house, not notable enough to be known politically, not even really land-owning, either. she lived a better life here, but remained still sheltered and out of the way; no one knew she had a crest. this minor house was clearly in decline, though, and it was only a matter of time until they disintegrated. 

her adoptive parents, however, did love her, so when, as luck would have it, the then-of-marriageable age lord fraldarius ventured through the area and was struck by the sight of her, they were more than happy to send her off, with what little remained of their money as her dowry, to marry into a family as prestigious as house fraldarius. with that action, her adoptive house was abolished, and she carried their last well-wishes with her to northern faerghus.

rodrigue was the only one who knew she carried the crest of the beast, but, in true fraldarius fashion, wasn’t one to fear fables over what was real and true in front of him. no one else, even lambert, even glenn and felix, knew the truth about her. she died when felix was young, probably no older than six or seven, but only she and rodrigue knew the depths of her fears that her children would be born with the same curse, or that her legacy would bring misfortune to house fraldarius.

CF!route spoilers ahead!

given that this whole hc only becomes super relevant in my CF!verse, it’s kind of depressingly ironic that her fears do come true in that sense. glenn dies young, rodrigue is killed by his own son, and felix also dies after succumbing to blutgang: the weapon that matches the very crest she had, coming full circle. maybe the crest is unlucky, then? or maybe it’s just coincidence. hmm.

as for it being narratively appropriate, i mostly pegged that on CF!verse because it’s where felix becomes ( and canonically admits to becoming ) a monster just like he accused dimitri of being, shutting off his emotions and morals in order to become someone focused on bloodshed and violence. as the crest of the beast is rumored to turn its bearer into a beast, wiping them of their humanity completely, it seemed fitting to work it into felix’s CF!narrative somehow, even though he does not actually have the crest himself. the symbolism was just too good, basically.

final note on lady fraldarius: i think a lot of the reason why she was able to marry into house fraldarius despite having the crest of the beast is because of house fraldarius’ longstanding tradition of being something of a cultural anomaly within the kingdom. they seem to be the only house that doesn’t care about crests, pretty much at all, and who completely ignore the presence of crests when determining a person’s worth and ability. ( i have some headcanons on why this is the case, too, but that’s neither here nor there. )

[wolfhednn]

💫

send 💫 for a shuffle-generated meta | @exalteye

❛ don’t walk away, don’t walk away, oh when the world is burning. don’t walk away, don’t walk away, oh when the heart is yearning ❜

                                 — carnival of rust, poets of the fall

ooc. felix does not give up on people. despite being a very critical person, he has an incredible amount of faith in others — perhaps it’s accurate to say that, even if he tries, he can’t give up on people. even when he feels hurt or helpless, felix can’t find it in himself to truly close doors. he may act cold — caustic, even, but in the end felix can’t bring himself to completely cut ties. in a way, his heart is always open, even when he doesn’t want it to be. he can never bring himself to fully and completely turn away from the possibility of improvement and reconciliation.

even in his most broken interpersonal relationships — with ingrid, with dimitri, with rodrigue — we see that he can’t bring himself to give up hope and sever his emotional attachment to them completely.

his father, he still clearly loves despite his resentment and animosity. ingrid, he continues to look out for and worry about in their A support despite deliberately keeping her at arm’s length.

and dimitri. dimitri, he never loses faith in, not fully. he comes very close, and probably wishes he could just bring himself to wholly abandon him, but he doesn’t. catch felix being worried for dimitri in the flame emperor chapter: “if he keeps progressing like this, he’s going to get himself killed.” catch felix watching timeskip!dimitri from behind one of the pillars in the cathedral ( the only time you find him in the cathedral, mind you ), so frustrated at his own helplessness and urging byleth to get dimitri to see sense because they’re the only one who can.

i don’t usually pull from the JP script for fe titles because i find that often, the characters are so different between the two scripts that they might as well be entirely separate characters, but it’s worth noting that in the JP timeskip, felix is so convinced that dimitri is dead because “he’s nowhere to be found”, implying that he’s looked everywhere for him, a subtlety that’s missing from the localization.

( and of course we see the way felix starts to cautiously warm up to him again in the second half of AM, and after their A support. and how happy he is to be close to him again. )

once you’ve got a felix, you’re stuck with a felix.

[wolfhednn]

💫!!! *blows kisses*

send 💫 for a shuffle-generated meta | @gallantgautier

❛ passing bells and sculpted angels, cold and monumental, seem for you the wrong companions; you were warm and gentle ❜ 

                                   — wishing you were somehow here again,                                         andrew lloyd webber ( phantom of the opera )

ooc. felix is very tradition-oriented, and though he won’t admit it, tends to cling to routines and ways of doing things because they’re comfortable, but also because practiced customs often carry a degree of meaning for him that he fears losing if he abandons them.

after glenn’s death, felix mourned him by spending an inordinate amount of time in the training grounds. this served as both a way to busy himself with something useful so that he didn’t spend his time moping in a room with nothing to do, but also acted as his own way of honoring glenn’s memory, by continuing to practice the skills glenn had drilled in him in a place and situation where they bonded the most.

eventually, felix founded another personal tradition to remember his brother, who played such a pivotal role not only in his immediate life, but also in his values and who he prides himself on being as a person. as much as possible on glenn’s birthday every year, felix deliberately seeks out an opponent he knows he has little to no chance of besting. aside from the already-promising challenge of testing himself by fighting someone better, it’s also an homage to the fact that he never once managed to beat glenn. training with someone of greater skill lets him revisit his past and what it was like to spar with his brother.

but most importantly to him, it helps him remember the feeling that training with glenn always instilled in him: that he must remember never to be over-confident and always seek to improve his abilities, that even when he feels he’s reached the peak, there’s always more to strive for.

[wolfhednn]

in pokemon conquest, all warriors have deploy / battle / skill use / etc. lines just like they do in fire emblem, so i am procrastinating on my drafts decided to drum up felix’s because...... i’m obsessed with my conquest!au nest egg pls and thank you.

there’s more lines than these, but i got lazy.

FELIX — ( advisor’s heir of valora )

warrior skill adrenaline ( rank I ) — raises attack ( for 3 turns ) warrior at heart ( rank II ) — raises attack, range, and chances of inflicting critical hits ( for 3 turns )

linked pokemon ( perfect link ) lycanroc, cobalion

perfect link attack accelerock, sacred sword

perfect link ability  tough claws ( cf!au: vital spirit ), justified

character stats

Power -  80 (Rank I), 93 (Rank II)

Wisdom -  60 (Rank I), 71 (Rank II)

Charisma - 45 (Rank I), 55 (Rank II)

In-Game Quotes

attacking a castle "i’ll cut through.”

defending a castle "hmph. you think you can win? let’s see you try.”

mid-battle "chivalry and justice... these ideals are meaningless on the battlefield. all that matters is achieving victory, no matter how you do it. you agree, [pokemon name], don’t you?”

ordering for battle "give me a worthy opponent to battle and i’ll be content.”

when victory is near “victory is in sight. but don’t get reckless.”

forming a link “a new power at my side. [pokemon name], i hope you don’t disappoint me.”

perfect link "rockruff / lycanroc... your strength complements mine perfectly. i’m fortunate to have found a worthy partner like you. push me to grow stronger, and i’ll do the same. together, we’ll be unstoppable.”

using warrior skill "strength never betrays.”

winning a battle — attacking "are we finished already? i was hoping for more of a challenge.”

winning a battle — defending "pathetic. next time, bring your friends.”

losing a battle — normal "still not good enough... i need to train harder.”

losing a battle — recruitable "you're quite skilled. perhaps if i joined you, i could watch your technique up close.”

being recruited "i think that’s best. don’t make me regret it.”

[wolfhednn]

Who is your muse's Pokemon partner and why? What aspects of your muse's personality drew them to it?

ooc. i’m so so sorry. no one asked for this, absolutely no one. HERE WE GO CONQUEST!AU AAAAAA

a couple hundred years ago, valora broke off from the ancient imperial kingdom of dragnor, which had been one of the original founding civilizations of ransei alongside ignis to the south and the breadbasket of terrera in central ransei. after fracturing off from the imperial power after years of stand-off in what was essentially a cold civil war that ended in a reluctant treaty ( the warlord of dragnor decided it would be wiser to simply let them have independence rather than trying to beat them into submission when it would cost too much manpower and resources to try and push past steel type defenses with dragons ), the people of valora established their own territory and began making a name for themselves through innovation and industry ( and a very robust aquaculture economy! )

it’s said that at the height of the cold war, the then-insurrection head loog had shown his trump card, the determining force in what eventually convinced the dragnese warlord to consent to valorian demands: a 100% perfect link with the legendary pokemon solgaleo. as he took up the mantle of warlord of the new kingdom of valora, for this incredibly rare bond, loog became known as the king of lions, and his partner solgaleo was hailed as the patron legendary and guardian of the new state.

now, to hit your actual question…!

the fraldarius family, right hand to the ruling blaiddyds, have always enjoyed status as the warlord’s trusted advisers. felix, born as the second son of the household, is no different.

rodrigue would have a perfect link with a middle-aged, wise and powerful lucario. as the aura pokemon, he’s capable of detecting those with a noble spirit and a strong heart. as loyal as lucario is to his master, so rodrigue embodies the unwavering loyalty to his king. its balanced fighting style, specializing in both melee combat and ranged aura attacks, complement rodrigue’s excellence in both the lance and in faith magic. likewise, his insight and wisdom also reflect rodrigue’s similar traits: he’s intelligent and shrewd, as seen when he’s the only faerghus character to begin getting to the heart of what happened at duscur.

as a highly intelligent pokemon, as well, lucario did no short of shepherding and surrogate-parenting young glenn and felix while their father was busy with official stuff. its ability would be justified.

glenn, growing up in valora, initially trained much of his life with a honedge, a close partner of his. i would headcanon that their link is probably 90%, but not completely perfect. it’s now an aegislash, and definitely just as much of a little shit as he is. gremlenn.

however, glenn’s perfect link would actually be gallade. while aegislash fits him due to its dual nature as both a sword and shield and its legend as being a pokemon fit for those with strong leadership qualities, gallade perfectly embodies glenn’s marriage of powerful strength and deliberate prudence, with a fine dash of ranged psychic attacks to mirror glenn’s high proficiency for magic, and of course his excellence in swordsmanship and valor. the gallade’s ability would be steadfast.

and felix, running against the grain as usual, never found his perfect link until a diplomatic-turned-family-vacation to cragspur, where he battled and befriended a confident and proud little rockruff. he’s been his faithful partner ever since. naturally, felix’s rockruff would likely end up evolving into dusk-form lycanroc,  complementing both his high strength, high speed, while still keeping the high-constitution-but-low-bulk that is felix’s mixture of high HP but low def / res. loyal but proud, the pokedex entry says it all: “an intense fighting spirit underlies its calmness.” and just like felix, if properly raised, it will never, ever betray those its close to.as a dusk-form lycanroc, its ability would be tough claws.

however, in a hypothetical conquest!CF!au, he would have evolved into midnight-form lycanroc instead. in this form, his ability would be vital spirit ( bc hee ho hey CF!felix develops insomnia and i hate it ).

[wolfhednn]

💫?

send 💫 for a shuffle-generated meta | @hotheadhero

❛ when i need to stand alone on a faraway battlefield, my weapons are my dreams, and the wounds i’ve suffered are my medals. ❜

                              — medals, lu han

ooc. okay ignoring the fact that as soon as this song came on shuffle, i realized that it’s the perfect felix song, it was really hard to pick a favorite line because honestly the whole song is written gorgeously. ( also the one i ended up picking isn’t actually my favorite line in the song orz i cheated, but my actual favorite line wouldn’t really offer much in the ways of meta that i haven’t already offered. )

there’s a lot to be said with these lines about felix’s belief in self-sufficiency, the pride he takes in his independence — and his own views on how one ultimately needs to be independent in the world — and the way he single-mindedly forges ahead, despite all obstacles and setbacks, in pursuit of his own beliefs.

but i feel, in a way, that reiterating those things, which are core to felix’s values and the identity he’s claimed for himself, is kind of like beating a dead horse hahaha. ( incredibly important, but things that are self-evident, i feel, and visible just through writing him. )

so instead i zeroed in on the bit about the wounds he’s suffered becoming his medals.

again, a lot to be said about felix’s emotional wounds here, and maybe i will go into that for another time, but i mostly wanted to cover a big headcanon i’ve had for a long time:

felix has a lichtenberg scar up his left arm.

it’s been alluded to in ‘ in the land of the falling snow ’, as well as the aftereffects that he’s suffered from it. felix, being a warrior, has a myriad of scars and injuries from past battles, but the lichtenberg scar is probably his biggest ( aside from another big one he gets only in CF!verse. ), and the one that taught him the most. i do actually plan on drabbling it once he hits C Reason here in toa, because it’s a big part of my felix’s narrative.

a training session gone wrong, essentially, as he’s first learning to handle thoron. he gets cocky and over-confident, and it costs him. more will be expanded on in the drabble, but a thoron cast backfires on the training ground, going up through his left arm and exiting out just above his shoulder blade. it blows him back off his feet, knocks him instantly unconscious, shreds part of his clothing, and sends him into seizures. if others hadn’t been around at the time, he’d likely have died. as it is, he ends up in a coma for three days with severe burns.

when he wakes up, he’s really disoriented. the arrhythmia and his hearing take a few days to go fully back to normal, the balance and motor skills a few weeks. it’s over a week after he wakes up again before he’s even able to swing a sword properly again without dropping it or tossing it across the room by accident. the mood swings take a month or more to stabilize.

i hc that the scar, though it does fully heal over time, still aches a bit in cold and rainy weather. a combination of this incident and repeated thunder-based spell-casting over the years erodes at the nerves in his left hand. he’s prone to muscle spasms in his left arm here and there, and his left hand is prone to numbness, particularly after he wakes up, when he’s tired, and when it’s cold.

there are very, very few times in life where felix has been truly scared, and this incident is one of them. the extremely close brush with death leaves him rattled, with a deep impression of his own recklessness and the narrowness of his mortality that he’ll never forget. it’s a sobering experience that he learns from and carries with the rest of his life.

[wolfhednn]

(Has this been asked already?) It is said that over time or as a direct result of Glenn's death, Felix begins to take on some of Glenn's personality traits. What of his current persona is originally his?

ooc. so leading off, i think it’s a bit misleading to say that felix’s personality traits are either glenn’s or his own; they’re all his, in the sense that he’s not performing any of them, nor are they put on because it’s how he feels he should express himself.

that being said, felix definitely learned much of how to respond to situations from his brother. as i’ve mentioned before, glenn was his biggest role model growing up ( as he was for much of the childhood friend quartet, in different ways ), and he did, in some ways, seek to emulate him because glenn made the sun rise, in little!felix’s eyes. the unflappable exterior, keeping a cool head in an urgent situation, being independent and self-sufficient — these are definitely traits he saw in glenn and wanted to take on for himself.

some other parts of his personality are just Fraldarius Traits TM. they’re all bad at being in touch with their emotions, admitting to them, and externalizing them in healthy, constructive ways. they’re all hard-asses. they’re a historical family of elite soldiers, so they’re all proud and raring for a fight. ( rodrigue chilled out in his later years, as i imagine felix does too, but have you heard that man’s crit quotes in their paralogue?? )

felix was very different when he was younger, that is true. he was pretty carefree and innocent, and definitely more expressive. but it’s a disservice to say that what he is now isn’t also himself. a lot of how he’s changed is arguably more a direct result of the attitudes he faced in the wake of the tragedy and how he responded to his brother’s death. i’d touched a bit on it in my rodrigue drabble, but felix really felt misunderstood and emotionally abandoned in the wake of duscur, particularly by his father, but also by society at large. in his mind, no one understood his perspective or tried to see why he thought the way he did. the message he got from his father — who had a slew of his own issues going on at the time — was that his way of thinking was immature and childish, and that he needed to learn to see things like an adult. there was also a lot of comparison, overtly or not, to how rodrigue saw glenn ( who i hc was the favored child, though i don’t think intentionally on rodrigue’s part ). glenn had been honorable, mature, dutiful, responsible. felix was not.

this is much of the reason why felix overcompensates in the way he does. he’s learned that being tough, unshakable, and unemotional is being mature, and he’s sick of being seen as a child. i don’t think this was ever a ‘persona’ he put on in order to seem adult; it’s just what he hardened into over time, believing, as well, that how he used to be before the tragedy — clingy and emotional — was childish. it’s unconsciously part of why he’s so quick to denounce the same traits in others the same way.

he doesn’t quite get it right, of course, because he’s seventeen and also because the ‘tough guys don’t have emotions’ thing is a message internalized in his entire family. ironically, glenn, though also sarcastic and sharp-tongued, was quite different from what felix is now. he was a bit cockier, more charismatic, more playful. but he was also more openly caring than felix is now as well. i think the last trait is where felix begins to move towards after the timeskip, most notably in his A support with dimitri, as he begins learning that putting up a tough front isn’t always the adult thing to do. it probably won’t ever go away, because he’s a Fraldarius TM and because of the above-mentioned circumstances that shaped his personality growing up, but again, it’s not so much an imitation of glenn as it is just part of who he is.

( in fact, he actually has really bittersweet feelings about being told he’s like glenn. but that’s, again, an essay for another day. )

[wolfhednn]

ooc. does rai ever make useful headcanons? no. ( ft. @gallantgautier​ )