#Deep Backstory

[harbingerofsoup]

garashir is incredible because you have an exiled spy for an oppressive state with fucked parentage who doesn’t want to let himself be happy, but also can’t resist temptation; then you have a genius doctor who comes across as naive and too optimistic, but has had an ongoing identity crisis since the age of 15 because he learned his parents’ solution to his childhood disabilities was eugenics

and yet somehow they are so lame, just so embarrassing

[anghraine]

One of the highlights of the description of younger Kirk as a bookish and severe Academy instructor is that Gary Mitchell, the friend describing him that way, seems to have been his student back in the day and was trying to pass his notoriously difficult "think or sink" class at the Academy.

Present-day Mitchell mentions reading "that longhair stuff you like" to Kirk (now that he's acquired godly powers that include being able to read Spinoza) and there's this random lore drop about how Mitchell helped a lab technician with a crush on Kirk orchestrate her dating campaign, in hopes that it'd distract Kirk enough for Mitchell to survive his class.

It seems pretty widely accepted that Kirk had a romance with Mitchell himself at the time, which is not my take at all, BUT honestly it's hilarious to me that there's this whole Clueless-style "student matchmaking plot to get a strict teacher a girlfriend so he'll chill enough that you can pass the class" history established almost immediately about Kirk. Comedy gold, especially since Kirk and the lab technician ended up in a long-term relationship and he nearly married her.

Bonus: Kirk and Mitchell became close friends but Kirk is still incredulous at the idea of Mitchell voluntarily reading Spinoza in the episode. And when Mitchell flips into obnoxious god mode and describes Spinoza as simple and childish, Kirk is pretty evidently affronted and alarmed. It's not surprising that Kirk has big philosophy opinions given that futuristic humanism is half his personality, but the idea of him as a former philosophy instructor with Spinoza feelings who goes to space and still can't escape Bad Philosophy Takes is incredible. Even by Season 3, it's just like:

KIRK: Dr. McCoy saved your life. PARMEN: I am losing patience, captain. KIRK: And you consider yourself a disciple of Plato?!

[gaiamossiah-is-open-for-comms]

This implies that he actually tried his best to be accepted before. Just thinking about his attempts to fit in and slowly losing hope in it is 😭😭

[thursdaymoonrise11]

They have lived before, and they will live again.

could the shadow trio's lives be intrinsically entwined with isidora morganach and two mysterious Slytherins...

[owlsie-hoot]

Siegfried Farnon & Audrey Hall - pivotal Christmas Special moments

confessions about the past, proud surrogate parents, stolen hopes, a new future, tender compassion...

[kunikiiida-kuuun]

Those who haven't read Dazai's entrance exam LN don't even know that Fukuzawa literally entrusted the exam to Kunikida alone and Kunikida himself approved him and Fukuzawa took his word for it without any questions.

Dazai wouldn't even have been in the agency if it wasn't for Kunikida's trust in Dazai.

[laurellala-comics]

I may not be in the Percy Jackson fandom that much anymore but drawing purple Nico to represent angst and sadness is one of life's simple joys <3

[gremliinsart]

Dude this car kicks ass and I can watch Wreck-It-Ralph while I'm driving

[dustykneed]

looking at the choir, ocean wishes she'd realized it sooner-- you were good enough, after all.

all of you were good enough.

[doppelneer]

Been a bit... but updated Thousand Eyes and Golden Eyes refs!

If you don't know what I mean by those names points at the creature that's usually lurking in the distance in treasure reef (even though they took a vacation to sanctuary recently.)

Going to include some transcripts of some of the more noteworthy notes... just in case if it's hard to read.

Thousand Eyes - The Leviathan

Free, but thorough scars run deep. Then arose, a forgotten dream with consequences unforseen.

Crew, boat, and spirit height for size comparison

Large back fin gone :(

What remains of cut off fins

Scales - Has occasional patchy missing scales. They are not always covered in micro darkness but go through occasional build up and mass shedding

22 out of the 51 eyes on their face is missing

With pupils - These eyes are inspired by a screenshot of a cave in treasure reef for an Abyss spirit related daily quest. The cave looks like a subliminal eye to me and thought it would be a cool detail to add.

Wing parts were severed but limbs remain

Gained more armor-like back scales

Mandible horns move when jaws open

Golden Eyes - The Leviathan

Inquisitive, they watched the tiny beings it took interest in from a far, and sparked a distant dream. One day, an interloper wrought havoc on the beings and The Regal Observer for once did not stand idle. The opponent fell, however, The Beholder became ill and regrettably the beings finally perceived it in a time of weakness. Contained the once uncontainable. Inconsiderations prominent. Unrequited trust betrayed.

Crew, boat, and spirit height for size comparison

Large dorsal fin

Mineral deposits gather and naturally form around specific parts of the body. Used for protection or display. Closest to eels but is made of a similar rock material that the masks that form on elder manta and whales are made out of. Also similar to crabs "shells" and even sky folk masks to some extent.

4 sets of larger fins - small collection of fins similar to the sanctuary elder manta

Scales - has very faint gold splotches that can't be seen from a distance

Blue coloration inspired by night birds and certain accessories (points at flight)

Less patterns on underside

Subliminal eye patterns - [additional art note] friendly reminder to myself that simplification is my friend and to do it when I feel like I need to (especially with pattern details.)

51 eyes (on face)

12 limbs, 8 fins, 36 small fins, 1 dorsal fin.

Thousand & Golden Eyes Comparisons sheet

Sketch sheet showing how both would stand on land

Golden eyes using secondary wings and hind legs to stand on land vs using primary wings & hind legs

Golden never uses all limbs at once

Meanwhile, Thousand eyes uses all limbs on the ground.

The screenshot I redrew as an eye mentioned in the Thousand Eyes ref

Just for a better veiw.

BONUS THEM AS CATSSSSS!!! HEHEHE!!!

I also have a bunch of meme-y stuff I might share in the future but for now that's it from me. :]

[stagefoureddiediaz]

I don’t quite know how my brain got here right now - but I’m thinking thoughts about the way the show has been paralleling Buck and Eddie with each other - as well as with the canon couples on the show - but in a very specific and interesting way - because when you take Abby and Tommy as a collective - they are a parallel of Shannon.

All three are firsts and not lasts for Eddie and Buck.

Abby and Tommy have been intentionally connected on the show (yes making use of a fluke name commonality but that’s what makes it especially clever and interesting) on several levels as being basically two sides of the same coin - Abby was his first serious relationship and Tommy his first queer relationship - they are both Bucks firsts and not his lasts. In the same way that Shannon was Eddie’s first and not his last - the show chose to have buck point out that Shannon was the first girl Eddie slept with - implying she wasn’t his first girlfriend (something that was confirmed in the cut Eddie/Chris conversation about the lake.

If you think of Shannon as two entities instead of one person - Texas Shannon and LA Shannon - it becomes easier to spot the parallels.

Texas Shannon is paralleled with Abby - both leave their respective homes and don’t come back - both Buck and Eddie expected them to return when they had done taking some time for themselves - finding themselves.

While LA Shannon is paralleled with Tommy - LA Shannon asks for a divorce after Eddie wants to have the second child he thinks is coming and to get remarried etc - to go all in with her and their relationship. He is making a decision based on flawed thinking and external expectations after a conversation with a ‘elder’ (supposedly wiser figure - Bobby).

Which is very much a parallel to Tommy dumping Buck after Buck decides to go all in and ask Tommy to move in and starts talking about marriage - after the hurdle of discovering Tommys past with Abby and having talked to an elder (in this case Josh who is a queer elder).

Both narratives are connected to commiting to something due to societal expectations - for Shannon it was becoming pregnant outside of marriage in a Catholic dominant society and therefore ending up married to Eddie.

While for Tommy it was having to mask himself as a straight man because he was in the army and firefighting - both environments that were toxicly masculine and heteronormative at the time Tommy was in them and so he ended up in a relationship with Abby - which then sets up the circumstances for Abby to feel the need to run to find herself.

Both Texas Shannon and Abby then feel the need to run - to find themselves because of the environment they find themselves in and this sets up LA Shannon and Tommy as second firsts for Eddie and Buck. And both LA Shannon and Tommy have grown and evolved since Texas Shannon and Abby and both can see that their respective relationships are not meant to last - that they’re not the right fit - that they are forced and they have the personal development to choose end them before they cause more hurt and damage.

It’s a great play on being firsts and second chances but not lasts and it ultimately shows the suitability of buddie - they make the same mistakes in a different way - both having their first independent of each other but having their second chance/ second first whilst within each others orbits - and because they are ultimately looking for the same thing it is all serving to spin them closer to each other to a point where they can understand what their lasts look like - and that it’s each other

[verreerrant]

My Luminara Unduli and Barriss Offee designs! I have reworked alot of Star Wars species since as amazing As the universe is... half of the "aliens" are repainted humans.

Also looking at all of Luminara's live action poses, girlie is not photogenic (headcannon the actress is great)

Small things to note, Barriss has split hypochromia, brown and blue. Luminaras has yellow eyes since that is an eye color Mirilans can have, she is not Sith. And the blue beads are actually supposed to be inspired from the clay tiles used in mirialan culture that i read about once.

The outfits have a good amount of Christian coding, Luminara as a priest, and Barriss with a scapular. HOWEVER, I think that the Jedi order is more in line with a more spiritual or polytheistic way of thinking. I mean, look at Hinduism and Buddhism. I PERSONALLY see the Force and Jedi teachings more aligned with that, even if Anakin is a Jesus figure guy. (sry if its badly worded i am very tired)

also also, The mix of someones heriatage and cluture as it mixes with being a Jedi is one of my favorite things to think about atm. And these two are such different ways to look at it too. I will stop rambeling now and talk about it laterrrr bye.

[quibbs126]

So today I decided to try and draw Skyfire, in the same sort of vein as I did the War Dawn trio, to try and practice him

I mostly chose Skyfire since I made a couple posts about him/skystar, so I figured might as well draw him, especially since he shows up far less than his counterpart

To be perfectly honest, I think I still need a lot of work in drawing these guys, as I’ve said many times before. I think I can get the heads, but I start to get wonky with the chests, and I really didn’t know how to do his shoulders

Anyways, so this design is based on his g1 design, mostly this one image I got of him

But I also wanted to take some liberties with his design, at least in the head area. I’m realizing I didn’t actually change much of the rest of the body outside of omitting bits, as per usual

I don’t know, I think I like the head design, I just need a slight bit more consistency with it. Also in my head, he’s got a visor that drops down to completely cover his face, but the issue there comes in his colors. His glass is blue, so logically his visor mask would be blue too. But the top of his head is also blue, and it’s really the only other place the blue shows up in outside of the glass. So either I’d have to make his mask red and break consistency, or change the top of his helm to be another color (probably red) and get rid of one of the few pops of blue he has

I also just don’t know how to draw his chest things, the sides that pop out. So that’s why they look weird

And also, his shoulders are like the one part of him that’s circular outside of his helm, and it really annoys me because it sticks out so much to me, with basically the rest of him being rectangular

Also also, I don’t know how to do the arms either, in part because of the circular bits and also I don’t know how to make the triangular prisms

Where was I going with this? I don’t remember. All I know is that while I like his head, I’m well aware my drawings of him aren’t the best. I still need to learn how to draw Transformers properly. Which I’ve been saying for quite a while now, but I’m not sure how much progress I’ve made on that front

But anyways, last thing to talk about I suppose is the design itself. I quite like it, but because it doesn’t belong to any continuity, only being me tweaking his g1 design, I’m not sure what to use it for. I could use it for my own if I really wanted to, but of my random AU ideas, I don’t really know where to fit Skyfire in them. And would I make all subsequent designs for this hypothetical AU based on their g1 designs? I don’t really want to do that with Megatron, I don’t really like his helm design in g1 (it’s weird and ill defined to me)

But for now I guess, I have made this Skyfire design. Not the best work of mine, but I’m still trying to learn Transformers, so I’ll take it

[wellsbering]

Buzzfeed list called Top 10 TV Characters Who've Suffered More Than Christ

[dexterityemma]

saw someone a few months back say that they got spoiled by a “no beta we die like jason todd” fanfic tag and I do feel bad bc that would fill me with rage but also I have to wonder. were they. reading the Batman comics in order?? like wdym that was spoiled that’s like every single Batman comic post-2005. I can’t stop wondering.

[emblemxeno]

I think the thing that really bugs me when people talk about "3H is so much better than Fates in terms of grey morality"... is that it only focuses on a very specific subset of greyness as a whole. When you actually take a step back from the perspective the game shows you, it's actually not morally complex in the slightest, especially compared to Fates.

For Fódlan, you're introduced to a fundamentally broken system that thrives off of eugenicist breeding, abuse, tyranny, technological stagnation, religious dogma, theocracy and experimentation that saw a young girl watch her fellow test subjects almost all die having Crests implanted into them just to create a superhuman. Said theocracy is staved by a consummate liar who's basically "Corrin, but gone wrong and a terrible human being" with an inability to let go of severe mommy issues or the ability to let go of her hatred and genocide denialism, intentionally keeping up a lie to make the most of it. Said subject leader ended up wanting to cast down the oppressive system to make one of "merit," but becomes an imperialistic, authoritarian revanchist who stages a war of total conquest to enforce that order, and in her ending, doesn't even fully dismantle the titles of nobility outright. Dimitri was genuinely a decent person before the massacre that killed most of his family and almost everyone he loved, causing him to go under severe psychosis that, when unraveled, causes him to turn into a bloodlusted maniacal tyrant who's more in line with Ashnard from FE9 than the typical "good boy lord" archetype since Marth. The least horrible of the bunch is a neoliberal schemer who sides with the strongest side (in VW it's the Church, in GW it's against the church) who can and does show a willingness to drop his interests like a hot potato when it suits him and openly intended to have Almyra invade Fódlan to establish the continent as his own suzerain state. And each of them, if not held back by the sheer divine grace of Byleth's mute ass, ends up committing tons of atrocities in the opposition to manipulate the audience into thinking they chose the "right" side. Hell, even in YOUR route it's strongly implied you're doing the things in the other routes and the story just doesn't want you to consider it because you're the good guy from your POV.

They're all awful and war criminals, and no matter what people say, that isn't moral greyness or moral complexity. Having a story where there isn't a clearly-defined sense of right and wrong, good and bad, to define morally grey conflict as a whole leads to a story where they're all horribly awful if the story isn't smart enough to recognize it doesn't fully absolve them as a person for your actions nor does it dehumanize them. People set a 0-100 scale that's never in the middle assuming a war criminal is either a goodest boy who did no wrong or a violent monster who needs to be put down and not made excuses for it, when the truth is that people are far more complicated than they seem on the wholesale. 3H doesn't do this, it wants you to think your side is always the good guys and the enemy side is sympathetic but still the bad guys. And it does this to avoid pushing forward the truth that you're genuinely no better and that the story is openly feeding you an extremely impressionistic lie of events. This is where any moral greyness falls apart, as without any kind of acknowledgement of your side's failings in a morally grey conflict, there is no hope of making a story that's actually morally grey. You created "hero defeats woobie villain" type story-writing, just slapped a coat of paint calling it morally grey when it isn't.

To give a contrast, Fates goes out of its way to avoid ignoring the actions and consequences of Corrin's choices. All of the routes have players make choices that cause a severe lapse of judgement that leads to bloodshed on both sides and innocent people on both sides dying. On Birthright, you're intentionally invoked ludonarrative dissonance by Corrin in that route being loud and aggressive of killing Garon and not questioning the "good kingdom vs. evil empire" conflict... with not only Corrin not even trying to stymie the bloodshed, but the abundance of route maps and killing waves upon waves of enemies influences that bloodshed and is meant to make players question their actions even as they kill recruitable, named soldiers on the other side. Even Ryoma, by openly lying to Corrin about not about being blood related, is more morally complex because he did so in order to keep Corrin and his family together and because it's essential data, nevermind that Ryoma is strongly implied to know Nohr is starving and just... do nothing about it, feigning ignorance with Silas's explanation in Birthright Chapter 23. Even as far as Corrin being a genuinely good person, they still kill thousands in-story and they don't really care about who lives and who dies as long as it's not their Nohrian siblings, and this leads to Xander accidentally killing Elise and then committing suicide by cop. All while Corrin teaches Ryoma to change as a better person.

Conquest is even more morally complex and grey; Corrin goes back to Nohr with the inability to betray the only family they've ever known and try to end this madness internally, before realizing the privilege they commanded as a Nohrian royal and tried to sabotage the Nohrian war effort and work in any kind of change. He succeeded in ensuring no casualties in small skirmishes, but he failed miserably trying to ensure no deaths in Cheve as it suddenly made them realize the rot is far too institutional for them to fully reform; Garon is a flesh-puppet piloted by Anankos with no regard for anything but destroying both kingdoms, his two trusted men are evil, and the Nohrian royals are deep in denial their father who was once loving and kind has become rotten and abusive and caused so much trauma they don't want to even acknowledge he's been gone for so long. It's a frightening realistic depiction of an abusive household with how the Nohrian royals self-rationalize their control over a fundamentally fucked-up situation, and Corrin begins to see that when Azura reveals Garon's true form. Knowing that the Yato as is isn't strong enough to pierce Garon's blessing from the Rainbow Sage and actually defeat them (which is strongly implied if not all-but-confirmed to operate similarly to Ashnard and BK's blessings in FE9), they need to show Garon's true form to the army... so they intentionally and knowingly abet the genocidal invasion of Hoshido, needing to sacrifice his ideals to save as many people as he can in the least horrible, fucked-up way possible. Along the way while they save a few thousands die in the invasion and Corrin ends up seriously mentally breaking up along the way as he's forced to nearly kill his two brothers and become demonized by the nation he's putting to the sword for the greater good, as he's forced to keep up the lie of a heartless invader until it just... becomes too much. And this is the route people have the most issues with, despite being the route that is so fucking complex that it gives everyone the moral sympathy needed to be empathized with, while not excusing their actions.

What Fates does exceedingly well that 3H doesn't is that it recognizes that the characters' choices are their own actions, and expects readers to pay attention to dialogue to connect fundamental revelations of the plot. It doesn't need to make its characters morally hazy-feely or war criminals with fundamentally unsympathetic traits to make them morally complex, it does this by having the fundamental concept behind Fates is two forces of good people being trapped in a fundamentally violent and horrible war that threatens to tear the continent apart in the process. And Fates does that so exceptionally well by having actual moral complexity to the characters that merits reasons to go down each of the routes while not being so non-committal to calling out injustice or bad actions in the story that it completely destroys any point it has. With Fates, I get the feeling of two families and armies of good people trapped in a war that's engineered by a broken god wanting to destroy the world and both kingdoms. With 3H, I get the feeling many people in Syria felt about each of the factions being staffed with war criminals, rapists and mass-murderers. I can sympathize with all sides of Fates because it recognizes their actions as they are while not diluting their complexity as characters. I cannot sympathize with 3H's lords because they are all so solely-defined by their end slates that no amount of blood, violence or suffering will ever be enough to end the war and them crossing lines even Ryoma would never, ever do. Ryoma, as in the guy who runs basically Fates's equivalent of the Ninja CIA with all the ugliness it implies. Even he wouldn't do what Edlegard, Rhea and Dimitri stoop to in their oppositional and player routes, and while the story humanizes Ryoma, it just expects us to love 3H's blorbos so much we just begin making jokes about how war crimes are "expected" of the series and we should still forgive them because... the story presents it better?

It's a major reason the shitting on Fates's story while lofting 3H as the better one irritates me so much; Fates had an actual writer who was committed to the greater narrative and nuances of the characters that got botched in the implementation of the JP script (which was why IF was even more panned there than Fates was here, which has regular appreciators outside of hardcore FE fans) and got fixed in the localization (despite its flaws), while 3H expects people to just believe they're the good guys without actually thinking about what their actions entails or making consequences stick. And I think it's most infuriating because the reason why people got so weird about Fates, especially Conquest, is because it was so willing to make the player feel uncomfortable with their actions and provoke intentional dissonance in their actions of being rewarded for the right inputs as a Good Gamer™ versus the very visible suffering it causes, and it not saying to the camera "And That's Terrible" and expecting it to be evident within the context and subtext of the work. For many people, it wasn't, and gave such a bad first impression regardless of the sheer cohesive validity of the work that they just wrote it off and dismissed an amazing story as too little value to actually analyze. Meanwhile, 3H's logos, ethos and pathos follow-through sucked ass, but people forgave it because of the lore boner people had and because, when you break it down, 3H is no different than the "good guy vs. evil empire" stories the fandom derides, it just does so in a way that makes those your route deems "evil" sympathetic even when they really aren't. It was so telling that when FE fans said "We want grey morality!" what they really meant was "We want to be morally, objectively correct and rewarded for being a Good Gamer™ while the enemy army has a sob story that makes them sympathetic while still morally, objectively wrong!". In hindsight, it's not hard to see why, Arvis, Lyon and BK are the series's most popular villains, but it's not good writing to apply that to a story about war criminals while thinking sob stories serve as a sufficient excuse to unconscionable atrocities, because FE fans don't want to feel responsible for their actions. They're literally the kind of people Spec Ops: The Line critiques about the typical military FPS dudebro wanting to feel like a hero for being a war criminal, only implied to an intelligence ego-driven bunch of virgin nerds who cannot agree on basic fucking canon details.

...this was a really long ask, so I'll TL;DR it with "FE fans are bad at media analysis and really should stop calling 3H better written than Fates when 3H refuses to actually analyze its own context while Fates does so extensively in giving each of the cast initiative, including for their own fuck-ups."

While I will push back a little against some of the assertions regarding Rhea and Claude (and also Dimitri somewhat) given their circumstances of being the ones on the defense in 3H, I vehemently agree with your assessment, and that's why 3H in general falls flat for me in its storytelling.

Fates, as you say, has intentional dissonance that makes you question your actions when provided with more information the further you get into the game. 3H's dissonance just reads very unintentional.

Edelgard's entire route is obvious low hanging fruit, especially the scene where she executes Dimitri, accusing him of "being obsessed with her" when she's invading his country for no fucking reason other than wanting to enforce her will on independent countries. Instead of going to therapy, she decided to kill a bunch of people, she's nuts and will never not be a shit person.

But to your point, there are other lines in 3H that read similarly ridiculous, fanning the dissonance.

Edelgard and Claude's lines to Kostas in chapter 2 about "being noble and commoner isn't different and you don't have the right to kill actually", and they both sound like immature fuckwads. Claude's consistent push to pry information out of people is insensitive at best, and borders on invasion of privacy. Claude constantly both sides-ing the church and Edelgard, and that's not even going into the shit he pulls in Hopes. Dimitri both sides-ing the dynamic of nobles getting rid of their successors for not having crests. Dimitri constantly trying to find the best in Edelgard after he begins his recovery, to the point where an unbelieveable parley scene occurs, like give me a break. Rhea is never able to confront her issues and mistakes on screen unless she's dying or being romanced by Byleth. Sylvain's "battle of ideals" line in Azure Moon, Dorothea being sad over Ferdie in AM or VW despite him being kind of a coward in that he doesn't have the stones to bite back at Edelgard, Mercedes also has a line about Ferdinand, in general just the entire spiel that side characters make about fighting old friends because "there's no choice."

Does this cast have any self awareness or agency, or not? That's why I rail against Byleth's presence in the plot so much, because he's treated as the end all be all of what is right/moral/correct. Sure, characters can feel bad about what they're doing, but because Byleth (i.e. the player) is there, they must be on the right path in the end. And everyone has to be sypmathetic when you're against them because there has to be room for Byleth (i.e. the player) to have enough reason to join them in another route, otherwise the multi route structure doesn't make sense.

In concept it's already a story structure that warps itself around what makes the player insert feel most good, but in execution it's somehow even worse. And that's because all of it is done in dialogue, many lines of which I've already mentioned. You're not supposed to think about the material reality of the shitty things these characters do and say, because the priority is that they can tug at your heart enough for you to excuse them/fix them/justify them.

Claude is ultimately not a bad person as a whole, but the game really wants you to not consider how feckless and fickle he can be when faced with bad odds, especially when he kind of effectively abandons an entire country that he's supposed to be leading whenever Byleth's not supporting him. Rhea and Dimitri are snug fit into either "crazed opposition that must be taken care of" or "person project that You need to get a handle on", both interpretations taking agency away from making the player seem like a bad person or going in the opposite direction by making the player the ONLY person who's able to save them from themselves. And Edelgard is the queen of never being held to account the damage that she does, always skirting responsibility in-game and in the fandom because "she just did what she felt she had to," "sometimes change takes sacrifice and horrible choices," or "she just wanted to WALK with you, sensei!" All in an attempt to get you to not care what you do when siding with her, and to make you feel bad for her when you don't side with her.

The player must never feel bad about the objectively bad things they do, and must always feel correct and justified in the things they feel are correct. That's the 3H M.O. When you recognize that the people you side with are kinda shitty no matter the route, it's not because the writers wanted you to, it's because you put the time in the think about it long enough. The game wanted you to feel bad about the war because "we used to be FRIENDS", not because of the terrible things you do in the war in the first place, as if the methods and machinations aren't a significant part of why warfare fucking sucks.

And as you say, and I mostly agree on, is the Fates M.O. is not shying away from the negative impacts that Corrin's choice had. In Birthright, Corrin's close Nohrian allies/siblings die because of the choice he made, because siding with Hoshido had a ripple effect on how those near and dear to him were treated by Garon. Another part of Birthright's narrative is the Hoshidan cast having to get used to Corrin just being himself, and trusting that a Nohrian isn't who they believe them to be. Exposing Ryoma's ignorance and showing that his arrogant juggernaut plans aren't gonna cut it when it comes to establishing a lasting peace, is critical in showing that, yeah, mindlessly fighting Nohr doesn't fix the root problems. It intentionally pulls the rug under the player by going "yeah your side kind of fucking sucks for charging at Nohr all this time, when these are people with dreams, loved ones and livelihoods."

Conquest puts a twist on this, by having Corrin be relatively successful in some areas when it comes to changing perceptions towards Nohr, helping people gain autonomy from a brutal regime, and actively undermining the horrible things that war has its soldiers do. The rug pull is then done during chapter 13, and again after the Sakura map, where Corrin is smacked with the reality that sometimes you fucking fail at what you're trying to do in story, despite the player succeeding in gameplay. The player representative doesn't have complete control nor is he treated with kid gloves in Fates when faced with the ugliness from his side and the opposition.

And what's greatest about it, is that it's showing you, rather than employing a missable dialogue in a monastery about how sad it is to fight against former classmates. Dude, I know it's sad, is that really all you can say? The message begins to dull when it's bashed over your head too much, and especially when there's no meaningful impact in story, all because there can't be because Byleth (the player) has to be accounted for as the ultimate arbiter of who joins him or not. You can't avoid feeling shitty about Scarlet, like you can with Ferdie. You can try your best trying to get around the retainers in Fates when you fight them, but they still have crushing death lines because the story is written to accommodate the fact that you're killing people who aren't evil at their core. 3H has to make sure you can avoid that before a war even starts. Flora and Ryoma's suicides, Xander's suicide-by-cop, Takumi's descent, the fates of the Kitsune and Wolfskin who were caught in bad circumstances (something that, despite claims of poor writing, happens all the fucking time and is another shitty thing about war that more need to recognize); the topics of isolationism, war profiteering, subterfuge and treason, spy networks and thievery, the ethics of bystanderism, FUCKING CIVILIAN CASUALTIES.

That last one-alongside the general idea of trying to win a war with as little bloodshed as possible-is one of the prime driving forces of an ENTIRE ROUTE in Fates, and is still pretty prevalent for Corrin's beliefs in the other two. In 3H? Barely a footnote in all honesty, and more so an extension of how other characters are perceived. Edelgard forcing civilians to stay when Enbarr is under siege? Claude says "it takes some resolve, I gotta hand it to her." Remire being destroyed and the Empire doing fuck all? Uhhh, look over there, they got taken in by Rhea, don't worry about it. What about the effects of the Alliance being dismantled and given to the Empire, Kingdom or the church? Or showing more of the people in the monastery town that face the most danger from the Imperial invasion or the thieves after the timeskip? None of this is treated as the horrific circumstance it is, so it ends up as fridge horror you think about at 2 a.m.

Thinking about how the war affects the common people and civilians isn't the main priority in any of 3H's routes as far as I can remember, since it's just lumped in with the vague "too much bloodshed, doesn't war suck" aesop. We never dive into the specifics of why war sucks in 3H because doing that has the potential for the player to materially feel bad about what they're doing, so instead we always have a cushion to assuage our feelings in by being reminded that Byleth (the player) is the pinnacle of good and always knows the right thing to do in the end. Which is shallow, vapid, and utterly spineless in a simulation game series about war.

A lot of this is fueled by my anti-3H though, so I'm very willing to take corrections on things I flat out get wrong, I haven't played that game to completion in like a over a year, so the details are finally getting hazy.