#FE Gharnef

[haveapizzaparty]

If heroes become corrupted when an evil person wears their Emblem, would a villain be heroic when a good person wears their Emblem? I want Alear to find a secret set of villain Emblems and team up with grouchy tsundere old man Gharnef.

[frost-felon]

@greymousedragon

spent way too long on this shitty playlist meme

[pandorastower]

Art by kawasho

[real-fire-emblem-takes]

"If I had a gun with two bullets and was in a room with Thales, Gharnef, and Chrom...I'd shoot Chrom twice."

.

[thefehmpire]

To make up for not doing the special Fehvents anymore, I decided to make silly feh edits from the super mario bros super show! I just started watching it again after almost a decade since I last watched and got inspired! Down below the cut :)

[fe-smashorpass]

[fefuckability]

Archanea Qualifier 7

Feel free to rb/comment with your reasoning!

[randomnameless]

You think we're getting Hot Young Gharnef in Heroes than?

Hot or Young idc, but a Gharnef alt would be hilarious !

Especially since a minor antagonist will now have two alts because, uh, reasons.

[emblemxeno]

Once again Mr stalker raxy pal posted an ask of yours. What’s crazy about it this time is like? Dude edited it a bit I’m sure? Like? That is so crazy to me that effort is being put into this shit that you’d think these added seconds of time would help him reflect “hey maybe I should stop being a total loser and leave people alone”

Lol.

Conveniently leaving out this tidbit where...

Humans tried to exterminate manaketes after they had just protected them from degenerated dragons. Earth Dragons sucked for their pride and views of humans, but 1) they never chose to actively attack people, they degenerated and went feral, so 2) it's not equivalent to or worse than humans being fully aware of what they were doing when trying to kill manaketes and 3) none of what the Earth Dragons believed nor what they did once they were feral-i.e. not of sane mind-warranted innocent manaketes being attacked.

And the core foundation of the Archanea games is Marth, a human who's not a total fuckbag, stopping the dark cycle of hatred and retaliation. It's why his opposite is Gharnef, a human but also a fuckbag, who does awful things to people (causing both the War of Shadows and the War of Heroes) and uses dragons to achieve those things. It's why a major enemy is Hardin, a human who sunk into despair, sloth, rage, and jealousy due to his connection to Marth and Nyna. The reason why the War of Shadows got as bad as it did is because Camus was tragically attatched to his duty above his beliefs, and Micahlis had selfish, grand ambitions. It's almost like the pattern here is that humans do shitty things in the name of selfish ideals and good humans have to end conflict on behalf of the *remaining dragons wiped out due to aforementioned shitty things* and the other good people.

Similarly, Grima was made by a crazy fuck human who indiscriminately killed and sacrificed people for his own science project, and Loptous would never have even gotten to Jugdral were it not for Gair's power hungry ass.

Humans were also responsible for starting the Scouring and the Ending Winter, revising history to erase the Manakete involvement in Magvel, revising history and oppressing laguz in Tellius, and all of the fuckass business in Fodlan.

The only games that can be argued-though still with difficulty-to support his point are Valentia (which even then wasn't ashamed to whack the people themselves for feeding into their own reliance), Fates and Engage, the latter two he doesn't like, so... I reiterate, do they play any other FE games and not just screenshot stuff from wikis?

[skelezomperman]

you can redeem one FE villain but the price of their redemption is a protagonist will be evil. exchange who for who and why?

I could take the complicated route of discussing how "evil" could be used merely as a descriptor of an action or behavior being morally wrong. It would certainly be interesting to go this route and interpret the prompt as merely asking to see what protagonist can be made to do evil things even if such things are done with good intentions. But since my time is limited, I'll stick to the colloquial meaning of turning someone into having bad intentions. In this case, I want to see what happens if I trade Hardin for Michalis in Shadow Dragon. Yes, that's cheating because we know what happens to Hardin in Mystery of the Emblem, but how would things turn out differently were it Hardin allied with Gharnef and Michalis was the one helping to keep Nyna safe and fight Gharnef off?

[felikatze]

Looking at another post, there are some non white characters in Shadow Dragon, but it really depends on the artist and those games went through a whole lot of art shifts.

Hardin for example is often drawn with a darker skintone than other characters, even though his countrymen are always white.

Darros the pirate was dark skinned in the first game and its artwork, but all future games made him as light skinned as everyone else.

Gharnef also has a skintone similar to Validar in the old ova, though all other sources depict him as white, mildly tanned, or zombie-like grey.

Shouzou Kaga once mentioned he liked having "Arabian" characters and Heroic Legend of Arslan, which was set in Ancient persia was listed as a major inspiration for him.

wrong inbox, buddy! or is that relating to my aversa rant this morning? did i spark this whole discussion? do i even wanna @/iturbide on this one?

also like, still yikes, cuz arent both hardin and garnef evil? iirc hardin is like only evil in mystery of the emblem but garnef is the origin of the evil dark wizard fe archetype. even down to the whole controlling dragons thing. still not a good look

you know what is a good look though? engage. black people who are part of the main cast and not evil and just as zany and fun as everyone else. STILL haven't played engage but i love zelkov. i saw that one clip where he and ivy take ibuprofen together and it was magical. i'm smitten.

why sombron still purple though. like he's the same ashy as the others of his cohort (i.e garnef) just Purplier and the presence of actual black people makes it less awful and just odd. like his kids look normal? wassup

this is like. the THIRD time I'm just passively reading other people talk about FE and then suddenly an anon manifests in MY inbox. before that was the whole chrom's dad headcanon war and there was also some grima discourse iirc but i love grima discourse so i was just really excited to jump in on it.

[faroreswinds]

Has FE always had a problem with "benevolent sexism" given the complaints people had over Ladlegard or how Engage is handling the divine dragon vs fell dragon trope?

Yes.

Examples:

Eremiya was a kind bishop who watched after orphans until her orphanage burned down and she become evil. She raised children to be assassins and has to be ultimately defeated by Marth.

Turns out she had been brainwashed by Gharnef to do his will, and had never truly been evil.

Clarisse and Reese were two of the children raised by Eremiya to be assassins. Reese (Katstina) betrays her mission and joins with Marth. Clarisse is at least more cruel, but she is still a child who was raised to be an assassin, and yearns for a family and shit. She dies after showing her caring side, by her sister's side.

Altena is Leif's sister, who was taken by Travant and raised as his own daughter. However, despite being raised by him, she had her own misgiving about the wrongs she was ordered to do and eventually joins Leif side and against the man who raised her.

Ishtar is a loyal follower of Julius, even after he goes crazy and evil. She is betrothed to him.

Despite being completely loyal to Julius, she still acts against him by saving children that were ordered to be sacrificed. As such, she is treated as a poor woman trapped by her love for her fiancée rather than a complicent enabler that she is.

Olwen also worked for the bad guys, in a similar manner that Ishtar did. ALSO like Ishtar, she was horrified by the Child Hunts. She would eventually join the good guy side.

Brunnya is a loyal subject to Zephiel. However, she is also pretty much in love with him, and like Ishtar is a woman trapped by her emotional attachment towards her liege.

Aversa was a pretty awful person who served the bad guys happily, until it is revealed that she was also brainwashed to be subservient and cruel.

However, it's not like ALL bad guy ladies are poor souls who are trapped by love or by brainwashing.

Hilda is a cruel, vile woman who relishes in being cruel and vile. She happily murders children. No brainwashing involved.

Ursula is an assassin who pretty much loves her job.

Sonia is not even human. She was specifically created to be an evil entity. But I'll count her.

You may notice a few things about these ladies, however.

Most of the ladies without outside forces like love or brainwashing are all super sexy. Revealing breasts, revealing legs, bedroom eyes, clearly know they are sexy and use it to their advantage. We don't typically see this from the "Good girls" or even the girls who are on the bad side but eventually join the good side. In other words, to be a bad girl, you will also be a super sexy, older lady who likes to show off the goods.

They are never the main bad guy. There is always a male leader who is in charge of them in some way. Either a king, or prince, or a creator of sorts. They are subservient ladies to a man, even if they like it or not.

Women in FE are rarely evil or cruel for the sake of it, and if they are they are almost always the same archetype- sexy evil. And none of them are in charge, there is always a mean man who is pulling their strings.

That's why Edelgard is sort of a breath of fresh air. Of course, you can argue that Thales is sort of pulling her strings, but Edelgard is mostly in charge and leading the conflict that Houses cares about the most (no, it does not care about the Slithers at all).

And that's also why it is equally disappointing that she is fumbled so hard. Lot of the writing has found ways to soften her, or redirect the blame to the Slithers, or, like in Hopes, literally makes her a cute magical girl and spends so much of the writing blaming everyone else but her.

It's not unique to FE by any means, of course, but it starts to really grate on you, especially in the 21st century where we should expect better quality and less sexism in the works we consume, UNLESS the story is making a comment on said sexism or that sexism is part of the story.

Engage is not looking too promising in that area either. Good female Divine Dragon beat evil male Fell Dragon. The cute girls of the bad nation join your side, and the evil king of the bad nation is an old man.

And what do you know, the one lady who seems to be a unrecruitable bad guy is a sexy, clearly older-than-the-other-girls lady who doesn't mind showing off the goods.

Like.... it's so sadly predictable. And lame.

[archer3-13]

Seeing the reaction Fire emblem fans have with villain makes me ask myself question. Such as... was there ever a good fire emblem villain that's not commically evil ?

lyon and arvis work rather well as tragic villains for different reasons.

for its brevity i'd say ludveck in RD works really well as an antagonist for elincia who well evil isn't comically so, and in fact ludvecks evil works because its an altogether more grounded evil.

lehran and his whole plan to basically end the world because of a disillusionment with life and the nature of people also works well as a sympathetic villain within the confines of RD's themes.

zephiel and hardin, zephiel definitely more so, are fundamentally villains built on the tragedy inherent in their pasts that led to warped perceptions of the world around them.

hell, despite the whole child murder thing going on in fe4 geanology goes out of its way to emphasize how many of the people opposing seliph in gen2 aren't strictly bad people on their own just complacent in a terrible system.

this is all to say, that fire emblem has a lot of good villains built on not being comically evil. in fact especially in the past thats what fe's bread and butter ultimately was for its villainous cast. one of the reason i liked a lot of the c list minor boss villains for instance is that they often had lines reminding you of their own humanity more often then ya'd think. fe9s random comedy pirate boss in ch9 who show up just to pillage some houses at the maps top gets to lament how such a death is hardly unexpected for a sea dog like him.

in that sense i, personally, blame awakening for botching the ball hard in this regard. its cast of minor boss characters are much more universally despicable/comical in nature [which was always present but awakening leans much harder on that] and a lot of its sympathetic villains were underwritten or confusing in nature. not helped by the spotpass gang of 'characters that really should be dead but somehow arent, and now are getting a reprieve that doesn't really gel with previous characterization'.

walhart and especially aversa being the worst for this, because well gangrel being alive is somewhat disbelieving, hes still fundamentally a self serving asshole who's only helping out for his own skin and is only controllable because hes been forced to eat some humble pie. theres a consistent through line there. aversa despite otherwise being a sonia/fe4 hilda type suddenly gets to play the tragic victim of cult magical brainwashing and it is soooo fucking clear that they just wanted an easy out for her own behaviour. say what you will about fe12's eremyia, but fe12 doesn't pretend her actions are suddenly justifiable/forgivable just because gharnef was pulling some strings with magic.

anyways, this is to say that well i've come to terms with fe13 it has undoubtedly influenced modern fe in a number of ways and villain writing is one of the more notable ones in my opinion, often unfortunately to the detriment of the series own writing.

[real-fire-emblem-takes]

Gharnef proved that dude who said you can’t defeat him is true by defeating a bunch of other more popular mages in the voting gauntlet and I think due to this he should get an alt.

Summer Gharnef when?

summer gharnef...

[yanderefairyangel]

Brainwashing/mind control in Engage

Brainwashing in FE is quite a recurent topic, to the point we have a character archetype linked to this thanks to a certain Kaga.

However, I'd like to point out something about brainwashing and mind control in general.

It's that brainwashing in FE is often someone of superior power taking advantage of someone in their state of vulnerability. For example, in Eremiya's case, she is being taken advantage of by Gharnef after recently losing an orphanage she raised. Brainwashing isn't that far from emotional manipulation but while some of those case of brainwash were handled in a ... heavy handed way we'll say, I will focus on how it works in Engage using 3 case : Hortensia, Rafal and Veyle.

1/Hortensia

Hortensia is being mind controlled by Zephia during chapter 14 of the Solm arc. This spell is the result of Zephia using only her dragon mage magic. Under this spell, Hortensia is robbed off her free will and act lik a tool. Hortensia is a 14 year old girl who recently lost her father whom she loves deeply and though her older sister was dead then discovered she betrayed her and think she abandonned hee. She is also perturbed by the turn of events that perturbed her life as indicated by the dialogue she has as she threaten Queen Seforia, an act she did out of despair because she just want things back to normal. And when Zephia is casting her spell on her, it's exactky the word she is using, word for word, she promise her exactly what Hortensia wants to hear. And she is doing this right after Hortensia had an emotional breakdown. I think it's easy to see how mind control can be assmiled to emotional manipulation here. She is promising exactly what Hortensia wants in a moment where she is vulnerable.

This pretty similar to how Zephia behaves with Marni with the difference that Marni never told anyone how she felt and who she was as pointed out by Mauvier in chapter 21 (even though he does know how Zephia and Griss's stories). Zephia feed both girl with what they craved giving her control over when both of them are clearly in a vulnerable state.

2/Rafal

In his world, Rafal is acting because of the spell cast by the Sombron of this universe. Unlike the spell cast on Hortensia and Veyle, it doesn't alterate his personality nor made him forget the action he just commited, however it did create the confusion in his spirit as clearly indicate by how he reacted and how he seemed to fight against himself (point out to Eguchi's powerful "mune ga kurushii... zutto... zutto !")

What I said in the Rafal deep dive applies there : Rafal's emulation of Sombron and his behaviour indicate that this posession is double, he is under's Sombron's influence in a double meaning. Not to woobify him or anything but...imagine that you meet a broken man, someone who is still barely in his early tweenties and who had nothing for him, who accepted to throw his identity away when he was very young, having lost his only family and the lost his only friend and family, having grown up in an unhealthy environnement where his family is constantly consipiring against one another, who suffers from inferiority complex to always be protected, who have imposter syndrome and survivor guilt, who mainly resolved himself to live for his deceased friend/brother, who suffers from guilt because he think he stole the love that is given to him and is deceiving others and you suddenly promise him the recognition he always dreamt of, the acknowledgement he craved for... isn't that mental manipulation ?

It's the equivalent of giving a baseball bat to a starving kid and pointing to a bakery shop.

Rafal's action are his and he can only claim it as a way to regain his lost agency, but we can see that Xenobron's spell is mainly conveying the negative influence his father had on him

3/ Veyle

Veyle is victim of a spell that involves both the magic Zephia used on Hortensia combined with the power that Sombron used on Rafal (as established, Fell dragon shares the same power in this world then in the other) in order to create a new personality for her, one that seems "fitting" of the Fell dragon's daughter.

Veyle is a young girl who is traumatized by how people judge her without knowing her, killed her mother and tortured her and despised her, when she just want to fufill the promise she made to her mother and behave kindly. She refuse to indulge in Sombron's evil deed ad strive for him to accept her as she is, which cause her and some of her inability to be called a defect by Sombron. She refuse to accept the role of Fell Princess and to obey her father's order.

Her other personality is therefore the complete opposite : sadistic, willing to obey Sombron, wanting to become the Heir of Sombron at all cost (not even aware that it's just a way for Sombron to have Veyle do the dirty chores). Veyle's character arc is that she is being forced into this way, moddled after her father when she doesn't wanna be like him (as indicated by how Other Veyle speaks like a female equivalent of Sombron) ... this is again, a form of emotional manipulation where you are forced to do and believes things that aren't your own values and this can easily drive one mad.

It should also be noted that while they aren't "manipulated" with a spell, this draws a parralel with the Corrupted, the Emblem and Past Alear.

The Corrupted behave like mindless tool, robotic entities. The more elaborated one also behave differently then when they were alive. Hyacinth is the most notable one as we are told he used to be a kind father and good king until he became obsessed with Sombron. Lumera when Corrupted stops being the kind mother she was, and instead fall into the egoistic side of her motherly love for Alear, turning into obsession. The Emblem being reduced to tools, having no will of their own. And Past Alear of course, who is reduced to this state as well because of how broken and terrified they are.

[fe-smashorpass]