#I know people positively adore Silver’s western characterizations

[st-silver]

It has recently occurred to me that Silver is the way he is in the comics(at both publishers) because the comics are written heavily with specifically the English dubisms of Sonic 06 (and misinterpretations there of) in mind. This is why Silver is depicted as being awkward,

It has recently occurred to me that Silver is the way he is in the comics(at both publishers) because the comics are heavily written with specifically the English dubisms of Sonic 06 (and misinterpretations there of) in mind. This is why Silver is depicted as being awkward, nervous, insecure, incompetent, overly dependent on others and having faux-bravado (and saying IT’S NO USE) when in the Japanese version of 06 and everything after that Silver isn’t like that at all, he’s the exact opposite of most of those actually. Then because there are essentially no guidelines or restrictions on how Silver is depicted in the comics (again, at both publishers) that impression can be freely implemented.

This has been evolving (or festering rather) for over a decade now and a half now with Archie’s interpretation of Silver popularizing him as a shy awkward incompetent goober(albeit one that could still be taken seriously) due to the influence of English 06 and that forming the basis of how the entire Sonic comics crew views him due to working with that for over a decade, then IDW’s depiction of Silver takes even more inappropriate influence from the dub (and the writers previous works) and makes Silver very timid, nervous and dependent on Blaze in many instances which are implications ONLY in the English version of 06 that the comics have free reign to implement because again, there have never been any restrictions on how Silver is portrayed in the comics. This isn’t development into or out of a softer personality. It’s Silver being written with dubisms and impressions of those dubisms in mind. Impressions that have only gotten further and further away from his actual character as they’ve evolved between comic depictions.

The influence of these dubisms and the misinterpreting of Silver they cause needs to stop and I sincerely hope the awkward dork impression they cause do not influence how Silver is portrayed in the movies. The 06 dub and the false impressions it causes are a big part of why Silver has been widely hated and misinterpreted as a character. Silver is a competent aggressive rude punk with a heart of gold, not an over dependent awkward nervous twink. 

[ncfan-1]

Man, I really felt that when you called Rhea a karma Houdini. Like, while Edelgard’s my fave, it absolutely makes sense for her to die in 3 out of the 4 routes. But what exactly is Rhea doing if she’s not archbishop and trying to control humanity and history? Sure she wants to reform stuff but after everything it’s just that easy for her to hang around Byleth forever since she’s immortal and Byleth will likely have a longer than average lifespan?

I’mnot entirely sure as to the exact track of this question, but yeah, I feel youabout Rhea escaping the consequences of her actions (consequences that fit the scaleof her actions, at least) on 3 out of 4 routes--Karma Houdini is an excellentterm for it. She’s killed on Crimson Flower, and apparently she dies inVerdant Wind (going off of the wiki, here; haven’t played that route yet). Buton Silver Snow (provided you build up her supports enough; I’ve seenconflicting evidence as to whether an A- or S-support is enough to save her;something about Catherine’s unpaired ending talking about her continuing to actas Rhea’s bodyguard?) and Azure Moon, yeah, consequences are not reallyhappening.

Andto be clear, I don’t consider dying either her experiencing the consequences orescaping them. Dying and experiencing consequences for your wrongdoings are twodifferent things. While they don’t have to be mutually exclusive,they’re often two parallel lines, and in such circumstances, will never meet.

ButI think the nature of her wrongdoings ties directly into why it’s so difficultto hold her accountable for them.

Rheacreated a church with herself as one of the central figures of veneration—which,on top of being hilariously egotistical,is a clear signal of just what she wants from the people of Fódlan. Rhea spenta millennium censoring and revising Fódlan’s history, spent a millenniumamassing power to herself to the point that she has a standing army, thelegitimacy of an Adrestian emperor’s coronation--and, by extension, rule--canbe called into question if she isn’t present (and it seems to be the same inFaerghus as well, as it was Melusine--the brand-new Archbishop--who oversawDimitri’s coronation), all while somehow managing to keep people from askingtoo many questions about her seeming agelessness*, and basically settingherself up as the shadow ruler of Fódlan. Sure, Fódlan is politically ruledby the King (or reigning Queen) of Faerghus, the Emperor of Adrestia, and theDuke (or Duchess) of Leicester, but their rule can have no legitimacy withoutRhea’s approval. She holds the strings of power in her hands.

Rheahas spent a millennium punishing the people of Fódlan for their “sins.” It wasnever going to be enough for her, there was never any point where she was goingto be able to pull back, look at everything and think to herself “they haveatoned enough.” These people were always going to be the dirty thieves whomurdered her people and stole their bones. In her eyes, they were always goingto be the dirty thieves who took her mother from her. Never mind that all ofthis had centuries ago passed out of living memory for the people beingpunished. They must atone. They must always atone. (I honestly thinkthat was actually a nice touch to her characterization as an immortal; wheneverything is in living memory for you, it can be really hard to let goof a grudge, even when the people you’re holding a grudge against had nothingto do with the incident in question and are many, many generationsremoved from the people who were.)

Andthe ironic thing about that? Is that in the process of putting Fódlan throughthis millennium-long regiment of constant atonement, Rhea robbed them of thetools to really grapple and genuinely come to terms with what she waspunishing them for. The true, bloody history of the Heroes’ Relics and theCrests? She lied to them about all of it, and she conducted the necessarycensorship and historical revisionism to help ensure that her lies would neverbe exposed as such. The people of Fódlan can never truly put their historybehind them if they don’t know what that history is. They can never makedecisions going forward about how they truly want to regard Heroes’ Relics**and Crests if they don’t know what these things truly are. They don’t know thatthese things are truly the spoils of genocide, rather than gifts from thegoddess. They can never decide how they, as a society, want to treat the spoilsof genocide. And whose fault is that?

Rheahas created a system where the people she is punishing can never truly atonefor the things she’s punishing them for, because they don’t know what they’re supposed to be atoning for. The system isthis way by design, and was likely designed this way because Rhea cannot bringherself to forgive them. It’s sort of like when a parent punishes their youngchild for doing something wrong, but doesn’t tell the kid what they did wrong, refuses totell the kid what they did wrong. After the parent does this enough times, there’sa very real chance that the message the kid is going to internalize is thatthey’re just inherently bad, and thatthey must always please and placate their parent if they ever want to be good.In this case, Rhea is punishing Fódlan by making sure they always worship themother they “stole” from her, that they always revere her in her true identityas Seiros, that they always revere her other surviving kin (the saints) thathumanity also tried to “steal” from her, and that they never, ever know why things are the way thatthey are.

Rheahas proven herself perfectly capable of caring deeply about individual humans.Catherine, Cyril, Shamir, and Jeralt all spring to mind. And in the case ofCyril and Shamir, she’s proven capable of making compromises with individualhumans regarding faith. These things neither change, nor excuse, the way Rhearegards humanity as a whole. Her willingness to let Shamir serve her withoutShamir being a believer in the Church of Seiros, her willingness to let Cyrilcome to a decision on his own as to whether he wants to become a believer inthe Church of Seiros, does not erase the purging of the Western Church, not allof whom could possibly have been involved in the violent incidents we see inthe game. It just serves as a reminder that everyone is capable of caring forother people, even if they are, on a larger level, deeply misanthropic. Just becauseCrimson Flower!Rhea is Rhea pushed to an extreme, does not mean there isnothing valuable we can take away from it as regards to her views of humanity.

Andthe experiments she conducted on Melusine’s mother and her predecessors? Yeah,part of me is like “I could write a whole post about just that”, and the otherpart of me knows that I haven’t finished Silver Snow yet, and I need to wait. I’llchew on this one later. I’ll be chewing on it quite a lot.

Allof this, just because she can’t cope with life without her mother. It’s anextraordinarily petty reason tosubjugate an entire continent for a millennium, an extraordinarily petty reasonto put a stranglehold on the natural progression of three differentcivilizations. I think this is why, even in the Blue Lions route, where thenarrative wastes no opportunity trying to make Edelgard as unsympathetic aspossible, I still prefer Edelgard to Rhea, because at least Edelgard can seebeyond herself. At least the things Edelgard does aren’t just for her personalbenefit. But this post isn’t about Edelgard. It’s about Rhea, and why it wouldbe so difficult to hold Rhea accountable for everything she’s done.

Theanswer to that lies in how very successfulshe’s been in the past. It takes extraordinary circumstances for any of thetruth of Fódlan’s history to come to light; that’s how good she’s been at hercensorship and revision of Fódlan’s actual history (And none of it comes to light in Azure Moon). If, say, in Azure Moon,the truth came to light, it would have a deeply destabilizing effect on societyas a whole—while I do regard Edelgard’s path to a better Fódlan as the paththat has the best chance of actually fixing the problems permanently, I’m notgonna lie and say I think Fódlan post-game in Crimson Flower was not rocked by upheaval for a long time. So you have to be very, very careful about exposing her lies, ifyou think exposing them is even worth the fallout of doing so.

AndRhea has also been very successful in convincing everyone around her that sheis truly benevolent. Even after being sent out to purge the Western Church withthe other knights, Catherine still loves and adores Rhea and thinks she can dono wrong; it takes Crimson Flower!Rhea ordering Catherine to burn down Fhirdiadto even begin to shake Catherine’sbelief in Rhea’s benevolence. While we will likely never know for certain, it’sentirely possible that Jeralt was called upon to do similar things in his timeas Captain of the Knights of Seiros, and it took Rhea interfering with hisinfant daughter to jar him enough to break with her. So in a route like AzureMoon, how do you even begin to convince people that Rhea isn’t as benevolent asshe seems? She is, after all, so very good at appearing as this benevolentmother figure.

Longstory short, it’s difficult to expose Rhea’s wrongdoings or hold heraccountable for them in a route like Azure Moon, because she is so very good atwhat she does. She’s had a millennium to perfect it, and the protagonists ofthat route just won a war against theperson who was trying to denounce Rhea as a tyrant and throw off the bell jarRhea slapped down on Fódlan as a whole.***

So,what’re you gonna do? Rhea had all the power in the world, and she abused itwith zeal. And the thing about thatis, when people in positions of high power abuse their power over others, itcan be hard, even impossible, to truly hold them accountable in ways thatactually fit their wrongdoings, because the deck is so heavily stacked in theirfavor. That’s what’s going on here. What court could you convict Rhea in? Whatcourt could you even bring her to? What would you charge her with? And what do you do when the people all rise up inher defense?

Ona personal level, Rhea would likely suffer personalconsequences. The way my Azure Moon playthrough went, Catherine and Shamirwent off on a lifetime journey full of adventure and misadventure, Cyril flewoff into the sunset with Lysithea, Alois became the new captain of the Knightsof Seiros serving under Melusine, Gilbert left the Knights of Seiros andreconciled with his family, and Melusine got married to Dimitri. And sinceMelusine got to A-support with Seteth, there was probably an extremely unpleasant conversationbetween the two of them and Rhea postgame.

Myheadcanon from there is that Rhea basically wound up completely alone. She cameto see Melusine as her own person, independent of her potential as Sothis’svessel, just in time for Melusine to learn everythingthat Rhea had done to her and the others like her, and recoil from her infear and disgust, and want nothing to do with her. Melusine was basically Rhea’sgrandchild, and any children she might have Rhea’s great-grandchildren, but ontop of Melusine’s reaction, Dimitri’s learned just enough to put two and twotogether about what Rhea thought was going to happen when Melusine sat onSothis’s throne in the Holy Tomb, and has decided, not without reason, that hedoesn’t want Rhea coming anywhere near Melusine, or any of their prospectivechildren.

Seteth,as implied by people taking note of his and Rhea’s deteriorating relationshipafter Melusine’s transformation in the Academy Phase, is appalled by all ofthis. He’s been complicit in Rhea’s censorship and historical revisionism (wehear early on about how he disposes of reading material in the library that heconsiders ‘inappropriate’), but to me, it’s unclear to what extent this iswilling and enthusiastic, and to what extent it’s simply that Seteth spent solong in seclusion that by the time he came outof seclusion, Rhea was able to simply present all of this to him as a faitaccompli and he had no choice but to go along with it. As indicated in supportchains with people like Ingrid and Felix, Seteth is not overly enamored ofsociety as it is. This is the thing that finally leads him to break with Rheafor good. He would never support anyone else’s attempt to hurt her, and wouldstill protect her if it came down to it, but he’s pretty much done with her asa person.

Flaynis an interesting case. In her B-support with Melusine, she makes reference toknowing about some sketchy stuff Rhea’s done in the past, but it’s unclear justwhat she’s referring to. She could be hearkening back to the days when theystill went by Seiros and Cethleann, she could be referring to the censorshipand revisionist history, but she is almost certainly not referring to the experiments Rhea conducted on the people whowere either her biological children, or people she literally created. There’sno way she knew anything about it. The truth reaches Flayn’s ears eventually,and her reaction is basically that “*nervous laughter* what the fuck” gif that’ssuch a mainstay on Tumblr. She doesn’t react quite as Seteth does, because shedoesn’t fully grasp all of the implications of it the way he does, but shenever looks at Rhea the same way again, and starts to withdraw from heremotionally.

So.In my postgame-Azure Moon headcanon, Rhea lost all of her trusted and cared-forhuman retainers. She lost any chance of a relationship with Melusine or herprospective children. She lost the esteem of her remaining kin, and wound upmore or less completely alone in the world. And those are consequences, andpretty weighty ones, but they aren’t consequences that fit the scale ofeverything she did. They just sort of exist.

--

*Isay this because Rhea really doesn’t seem like the sort of person who’d feelcomfortable letting other people rule as archbishop in her place (unless it’sthe person she regards primarily as her mother’s vessel), even if only as atemporary measure to draw attention away from her immortality. If anyone everdoes a ‘Fódlan Gothic’ post, there had better be a bullet point on there that reads“No one knows how old Rhea is. No one ever asks how old Rhea is.”

**And in this case, Rhea is the reason people have been running around making useof the spoils of genocide, because she’sthe one who let the Elites keep the Relics. Am I the only one who cannotfathom a reason as to why she would let the Elites keep the Relics after theyswore fealty to her? Those things are her people’sbones; why on God’s green earth would she just let them keep them? If hervictory over Nemesis was resounding enough and her army’s losses minimal enoughthat she could make the Elites fall in line without problems, she could easilyhave made the confiscation of the Relics a term of their surrender. “I will letyou live in exchange for your swearing your fealty to me and GIVING ME BACK MYFAMILY’S BONES, YOU ASSHOLES.” That’s perfectly equitable. That’s perfectly fair. And in keeping with Rhea’s love ofrevisionist history, she wouldn’t have to out herself as a Nabatean or revealthe truth of what the Relics were in the official record of how this exchangewent down. Just say something like “And after the battle was won, the divineSeiros decreed that the Elites return the weapons she had bestowed upon them,for they were too dangerous to be used except in times of great crisis.” Andhonestly, saying that the Relics are too dangerous except in times of greatcrisis isn’t exactly a lie, is it?This one just makes my head hurt; no matter how sympathetically orunsympathetically I regard Rhea at different times of the day, I cannot wrap myhead around it. Here’s hoping finishing Silver Snow and Verdant Wind finallygives me some answers.

***Which she honestly kinda was pre-time skip in all routes, not just Crimson Flower. And was, as I keep harping on,an extraordinarily successful one.You know you’re good at this when you’ve got your “iron fist in the velvet glove”routine down so well that anyone who tries to call you out as a tyrant isimmediately denounced by everyone else as a heretic.