#General FE

[rorah]

To celebrate the Anniversary, I redrew the first thing I did for this game and gave it cohesion

... And played with it. Here are all the individual pieces 💙💛❤️💚

[dimiclaudeblaigan]

Personally I hate the "no meaningful way" argument. Imo it's meaningful just by those characters being who they are and not having to constantly remind people "I'm queer!" or "I'm bi!", etc. Rosado, and I know some others feel similarly, is the only one I'd argue is way too "in your face" and is similar to Heather from RD/FE10, where you keep getting a constant reminder about the primary trait of that character.

Writing characters should just come out naturally. You shouldn't need the character to say "I'm xyz" - you should be able to infer that from dialogue alone. For most of the Engage cast, that's definitely the case. You can generally figure out where the characters stand from dialogue, behavior and actions.

Characters shouldn't be written simply to fulfill an LGBTQ+ stereotype, but should be those things as part of their character - it should not be their character. Real people are just that - people, but some are LGBTQ+ and that's just one facet of them.

Typically when it's done in what these people are suggesting is a "meaningful" way, it's the only aspect that character has, repeated over and over until you forget they may even have other characterization. Frankly, as someone who is LGBTQ+, I find it to be a huge disservice to make characters whose personalities revolve solely around being LGBTQ+.

Kyza, also from RD, is another awkward instance of LGBTQ+ whose existence solely revolves around his/their (masculine appearance and uses gender neutral pronouns in the JP script - you can thank the localization for taking that out) one-sided love for Ranulf. Personality whomst? All I see is a character that exists for the sole purpose of filling the FE LGBTQ+ quota.

Imo it's almost always the actual LGBTQ+ characters that are written the most shallow. The primary aspect of their existence is to obsessively remind the audience that they're LGBTQ+. Monica reaaaaally blurs the lines, since I'd argue she has some personality outside of Edelgard, but they basically just made her obsessively in love with Edelgard to the point it's like 80 percent of what she talks about, rather than making her a good, intricate character who also happens to be in love with Edelgard. Considering I shipped them before Hopes even existed, I'd like to think it says a lot that the level of reminding of her romantic feelings is absolutely overboard.

Also, Niles iirc was kind of controversial because of his oversexualized characterization and being the only same sex option for men. It ended up feeling more like a fetish situation, and I'm sure there were ace men (or even not even ace but just generally uncomfortable with it) who didn't like it and wanted another options.

Basically I find that IS is not particularly capable of writing openly LGBTQ+ characters. If the character has to say they are and we can't infer that just from dialogue/etc alone (ex. Alfred), chances are that's going to be more or less their only personality trait and they're not going to have much of a characterization outside of that.

I feel like we got very lucky with Yuri. One could somewhat argue for Jeritza, but since his only same sex marriage option is Byleth and he has zero indication of any romantic interests with any other guys, it feels more like a forced "here let's add another same sex marriage option to shut them up".

Yuri is a man who views himself as a man, and wears makeup for the sake of appearance (i.e. not to hide injuries, etc) and because he likes it. He calls men "cute" from time to time without it being explicitly romantic, and it's not a constant repetitive quote that happens so many times that you can predict every conversation he's going to have.

Those among other things, he breaks gender norms perfectly while still having a complex and wonderfully written character. He's a good character who also happens to be queer - not a queer character who is just written to be queer for the sake of being queer. Wouldn't ya know it too - he's one of Houses' most popular characters. He's one of the best written characters as well imo and clearly written with more attention and care than most LGBTQ+ characters.

Also funny how people argue about the supports being so gender neutral about Alear, when people were actively complaining that Dimitri and Claude weren't made bi and saying their supports could've been, like Edelgard's with Byleth, just the same exact thing regardless of Byleth's gender. That people just wanted the options and didn't even care if the conversations were altered based on gender. Now all of a sudden, now that we have that, it's a problem?

There really is no making most of this fanbase happy, I swear.

People on Twitter denying that Engage’s cast is very queer coded is really funny to me lmao

Like, to an extent, I can understand it seems cheap and inoffensive just to make Alear’s romances gender neutral and them being the only ones to have paired endings is sad. Fair.

But deliberately ignoring how fruity the Engage cast is? What? Supports between Fogado/Alcryst, Fogado/Pandreo, Diamant/Amber, Etie/Goldmary, Celine/Hortensia are very gay! Anything that comes out of Alfred’s mouth is gay! Merrin is very les to the point her personal skill is her escorting women like the handsome gal she is!  Kagetsu and Chloe are very open and brazen with their gay words (okay maybe the former is explained by language barriers but honestly he’s probably queer, too)! Rosado personally executed the gender police himself!

Part of the criticism of Engage’s queerness is that no character “uses it in a meaningful way” i.e. explain deeper parts of their characters, and Twitter people compared it to X, Y, and Z characters from the game that shall not be named, and idk, personally in a game with a tone like Engage, it matters less to be specifically descriptive and matters more to be more playful and fun with it. It’s not like Fates where there were only two same sex S support characters and so they had to be written with that directly in mind for their characters (which Treehouse then removed, damn thee), but Engage from the jump tries to be more feel good and hopeful, so not only does there not really need to be character arcs intertwined with implied differing sexualities, that opens the avenue for more of the cast to be read as queer/queer coded by fans.

Idk, that’s what I feel anyway

[butwhatifidothis]

I just wanna just. Say something real quick, with the year ending soon.

3H is the one saying that the Nabateans were nearly all killed off.

3H is the one who has the Agarthans be the ultimate bad guys in every route and have them be defeated in some way in every route.

3H is the one saying that the Nabateans were defending themselves against power hungry humans and were the ones to restore everything power hungry humans destroyed.

3H is the one saying that the Agarthans knew that Nemesis was just a bandit who cared for nothing but power - that Nemesis was not some freedom fighter, but a genocidal tyrant.

The creators of 3H are the ones saying that the Nabateans never tried to "control" humanity, only that they ruled over them.

The creators of 3H are the ones saying that Nemesis and the Agarthans killed the Nabateans for power.

The creators of 3H are the ones saying that Rhea never tried to control humans when she made the Church of Seiros and rewrote history.

The creators of 3H are the ones that made the one route where the Nabateans are specifically targeted as enemies who "need" to be gotten rid of and the one route where you work with the Agarthans in any way the one route they explicitly say is the villain route.

There is no ambiguity in 3H that is enough for the interpretation of Nabateans being evil and the Agarthans being good to hold water. None. Both within the game itself and through the words of the creators, everything makes it clear that the Nabateans are the victims who are generally a source of good and that the Agarthans are the victimizers who are generally a source of evil.

And there is a reason that the people who insist otherwise have to lie about what the Nabateans have done in order to make them look wrong. There is a reason why they have to turn to the noncanonical spinoff game to get anything more to "back up" their claims - and why they still have to lie about what that game says anyway. There is a reason why they would rather support a group of characters who have proven themselves willing to instigate genocide against innocent people for power even when not accounting for the Nabateans, regarding the Tragedy, than say there is anything good about the Nabatean race at all. There is a reason that, in their reasonings and explanations as to why the Nabateans are evil, in their rush to say what they think should happen to the Nabateans, these people always fall back on real life, genuine racial supremacy rhetoric.

There is a reason why, even when directly told by victims of this racial supremacist rhetoric that what they're saying harkens back to racial supremacy, they continue to say the racial supremacist rhetoric - why they defend the racial supremacist rhetoric as "not being the same" because the Nabateans' race "doesn't actually exist." There is a reason why they insist that their racial supremacy rhetoric that is the exact same as every other racist's supremacy rhetoric about actual, real life races of actual, real life people is just being "taken out of context" - why they not-so-subtly imply that racial supremacy rhetoric has contexts in which they are okay to say.

At this point I'm not really going to sugarcoat it: if you see someone try to make the point that Nabateans are all evil and deserved the genocide that fell on them - or that what happened to them wasn't a genocide because they are all evil, or there totally weren't that many of them so it isn't a genocide, or there's totally more in some unseen unexplored location we just never see or hear about so it isn't a genocide - and/or that the racist, murderous, genocidal Agarthans were the good guys who "the writers failed to make look bad," despite everything directly pointing towards the opposite reading in every context of the game, know that they are almost certainly not doing so with any good intentions. They are almost certainly using the fictional nature of the Nabateans' race to use as a shield to spout racist rhetoric they know they "aren't allowed" to say about real races. This is far from the first time racists have done this regarding fictional races, and it will not be the last time either. At the absolute best, they are uncaring about how they are rationalizing rhetoric used to dehumanize real life people just to make some point about fictional characters, which is frankly not that much better.

This isn't about discourse, it isn't about whether people think Edelgard or Dimitri or Rhea or Claude or any other character did this or that, it isn't about war criminals, it isn't about theories or meta or what have you. This is about the real world rhetoric people like this slip into the fandom sphere in order to normalize it. This is about how these people set themselves up as pillars of their communities so that they can normalize this rhetoric without anyone able to stop them from doing so or stand up against them. This is about how these people silence the few who do speak against them if they're able, and set up anyone who speaks against them that they can't directly silence as "attackers," "spies," these dangerous interlopers who are trying to shut down a "safe space" for "no reason." This is about how they've been doing this for years now.

I've personally given the benefit of the doubt to others who've genuinely ignorantly done things like this before, but this is too consistent, insistent, and long-standing for it to be anything else but racism from those who peddle this rhetoric, whether due to being racist themselves or through their indifference to the topic of racism. Regardless of the whys of the matter, it had led to the 3H fandom to housing cesspits of unopposed racism that breed hostility and harassment to others; at the absolute least, the harm and danger of this mindset and everything it leads to and has already led to should be made clear

[moeblob]

Twins about to either get ice cream or commit war crimes pre-war.

[hulloitsdani]

DAY 15: Fallen.

OH, SUNLIGHT, DO YOU KNOW HOW THIS FEELS? CAN YOU IMAGINE IT?

DO YOU KNOW HOW IT FEELS TO KNOW THAT SOME COPY OF YOU WON AND YOU'RE LEFT WITH NOTHING?!?

ANNA… ALFONSE… SHARENA… VERONICA…!!!

THEY WERE MINE, THEY WERE MINE, THEY WERE MINE!!!

THEY WERE MINE FIRST!!!

AND YOU STOLE THEM FROM ME!!!

[energeticpoltergeist]

FE Secret Santa (5/10)

Seadall for @littleclairvoyant

edit: forgot to at @feshippingpolls

[real-fire-emblem-takes]

No more alts for the Three Houses lords until the rest of the students get their Academy AND post-time skip looks. Y'all notice who's missing from the Golden Deer from just their Academy attire? And when the hell are we going to get Ferdinand von Aegir's amazing cape? Seriously, give the rest of the students love, FEH.

.

[nick-cassidy]

x

[stupitunclehal]

heavy sigh. parts 1 and 2. checked my phone so we're hopefully free from the penis curse at last.

[moe-broey]

Quick and rough Plumeria redesign, mostly just cause...... I gotta do what comes naturally to me, man. Give me some Shapes. Simplify that design or so help me.

I don't have a lot of complex thoughts about it, actually! Just the idea of having a "sexy" outfit that draws the eyes to certain parts of the body -- while simultaneously being modest and Sharp. Having an edge to it. Also!!!! The luna moth inspired wings!!! I wanted to stay within her og color palette, but I've also always thought luna moth wings would suit her... the top wing is vaguely heart shaped, too!

[dexjarxenoengage]

🤝

Both having abusive parents who would use them for their ends.

[ciarre]

Frieren Emblem: Radiant Dawn

[sieglinde-freud]

worst yaoi youve ever seen

[moeblob]

Thinking about Dimitri Fire Emblem today. I miss my son.

[cyanide-butter]

[energeticpoltergeist]

FE Secret Santa (Bonus)

Ashe for @silversongmsp

an extra submission as not everybody got drawings during @feshippingpolls secret santa last year