#This might just be projection I mean to this day if someone has a specfic tone I don't trust them and feel like there making fun of me

[randomuzerthelozer]

Do you all ever think that Book saw pencil and matches friendship and just saw toxic grabage(THAT ONE IDFB SCENE AS A EXAMPLE) and she couldn't belive Match would stay as Pencil's lap dog for so long. And she saw her in a way as pathetic (Match acting as if she has the same power as Pencil dose). But then she meets pillow and realises the shit toxic yuri dose to you. I ADORE the fact Book's character acitvley showcases how Freesmarts and the toxictiy within it affected her future relationships. From her whole Taco thing, to Pillow

Like do you think the reason she hasn't left pillow is because she isn't ready to admit she yet again feel into the hands of a horrible person, even if she herself didn't realise how horrible that person. She isn't ready to say she did the same mistake again, because it's not logical to repeat the same mistake(FROM HER POV)

I love the fact her part in freesmarts left a affect on her, she may act all "girlboss" in Bfb 1 leaving, but the way she see's her relationships and the role she takes in them is still so simallar. Mabye her taking the role of Pencil(Towards taco) and Match(Towards Book) is some poetic irony(most likley not done on purpose but still). Mabye the reason she keeps linger on is because she isn't ready to say she did the same exact mistake as she did all those years ago by joining freesmarts, mabye she isn't ready to say she's more simallar to Match then she wants to be. She thinks she's rational and would standup for herself but she dosen't. She's not ready to admit she's just a more snarky Lap dog.

Mabye her next role will be Bubble and mabye finally she'll break out and end the cycle

[airlock]

airlock grades the Punchable archetype

so far, a majority of the Fire Emblem villains I’ve covered in this series are the sort who are meant to be liked, forgiven, sympathized with... these here are not those ones. these are the ones whose singular purpose in the narrative is to piss you the hell off. so, which of them played that role to excellence?

(do note: under cut are spoilers for… everything, and also a significant amount of me criticizing or blamming characters that you might- okay, yeah, no, you probably don’t like anybody on this list, but you may still strongly disagree with my opinions of them. you’ve been warned! ha, no way these fools would set about reading the whole post now... what!? impossible!)

a foreword

so, to be very specific, I’m not rating every flatly irritating miniboss here; the definitive aspect here is that the character has to be a recurring one, whose extended screentime never quite ends up giving them a chance to be something other than vile. but more important than the hair-splitting here is giving some consideration to how exactly I’ll be doing the rating; after all, I’m not supposed to like any of these people, but there’s still better and worse ways to be despicable as a character.

I’m running pretty much on two central critteria: is this character entertaining, and is that character satisfying to take down. it’s more important to hit one than to hit both; a character who hits neither is significantly more likely to be a pure waste of bile, however.

without further ado, let’s start gritting those teeth!

fuck this guy

(9/10)

directly enabling the single most badass scene in all of Book II obviously lands you on the upper echelons of this here character type. but that’s just the effect; we should peer into the cause of what makes him work so well!

of the critteria I mentioned, Lang goes for the latter: he’s not only quite satisfying to defeat, it’s also great anytime someone finally talks back to him and puts him in his place. that’s because he’s not the sort of character for whom this sort of thing is a given. a lot of the ones we’ll see ahead of him are incompetent toadies on top of being amoral, but not this guy; he knows exactly what he’s doing, relying on the backing of the most powerful nation in the continent to plunder, raze, and oppress to his heart’s content. the business of doing something about this dipshit gets severely delayed by the dire consequences of crossing him -- until Marth finally decides that enough is enough.

and THEN Jagen tells him to meet him 9 PM at the Grustian denny’s parking lot for an old man brawl-

fuck this chin

(3/10)

I struggle to understand ol’ Kaga’s obssession with jealousy as a villainous character motivation, I really do. it’s one entirely realistic thing to envy someone for having riches, fame, status, influence, the attention of one’s crush, or other such things that are more or less objective and palpable. it’s also entirely a thing to have an inferiority complex and fear or spite people one perceives as being more talented, better looking, stronger, smarter than oneself. but the way these characters are written tends to come across like they’re furious because they’re underwritten gonk and not everyone else is.

... which hey, would be a pretty upsetting thing if it happened to a real person, but I don’t think meta-commentary is the point here, is it? I sincerely hope it isn’t...

fuck this lady

(7/10)

the second leg of Genealogy of the Holy War finds you facing the same sorts of enemies most of the time: half of them are Satanists, and the other half are unfortunate innocents trapped in the crossfire of courtly intrigue. it’s exactly because of this that the arc desperately needs a villain like Hilda.

Hilda is just someone who doesn’t particularly mind if the most effective path up the social ladder involves destroying her relatives, daughter included, or capturing children and forcing them into murder tournaments. how is the imperial machinery of tragedy and death supposed to run without someone like her cranking a couple of the levers? er, I mean, you don’t really crank levers unless you’re doing something weird, but... okay, moving on

amidst all of the battles you might struggle to feel were worth fighting, Hilda here serves as a reminder, as a face of every reason why the Empire is the enemy and must be defeated.

and yes, making Tinny kill her rocks

fuck this guy IN AMERICA

(2.5/10)

not too long ago I would have dropped him a straight zero, but I’ve recently been reading through the Project Exile text dumps for a new Thracia 776 fanslation and what can I say, they put good work into making him tick properly and I essentially have no choice but to keep that sort of thing in consideration when making the ratings, being that all of the other villains are also characters I only have indirect contact with through a translation that may have improved or worsened things.

but the good work is no miracle -- although given much-needed entertainment value, this guy is still who he is: practically a standard-fare asshole miniboss who ends up getting three whole chapters to chirp into. and to make matters worse, you only actually get the payoff to him in one of two possible routes!

I am strong, I am clever, I am handsome, and most importantly, fuck me

(4/10)

I can’t possibly deny that his antics are some of the most hilarious on this list; the ridiculous speeches, the facial expressions from the manga, the fact that he gets demoted on screen... and I mean, they got Kaiji Tang to put voice to his high drama on Heroes, on top of it all!

alas, it just really spoils the fun to a significant extent that his very introduction in Binding Blade sees him macking on a captive prepubescent girl. however entertaining it may be that she snatches his wig on that occasion anyway.

fuck this morph

(5/10)

yeah, some people wish. notably including Brendan Reed-

the thing with Sonia is that she’s a little less believable than most folks in this archetype -- specifically because she’s not, like, working within the structures of power that would let her get away with being as much of a dip as she wants to; she’s earned her influential position by seducing the boss, which is hard to buy when, however attractive she may be, she never has a single positive interaction with anyone and nobody trusts her (barring Ursula on both counts, but she’s not the one who needs to be brought on board anyway). I realize what a phenomenon it is to think with one’s dick, but come on; surely, you don’t let your new friend with benefits tell you how to do your job just because she’s that good in bed or something.

that said, although her overall spot on the plot feels weakly implemented, she still makes for a tremendous bulwark to overcome specifically within Nino’s subplot. what a powerful confrontation against a lifelong abuser she provides in the end!

do not fuck this guy what is wrong with you

(3/10)

Valter is just uncomfortable as a character, which is limbo as far as emotion-inducing goes; it’s not particularly entertaining, and nor is it artfully terrifying in the way that Orson is. furthermore, I normally praise Sacred Stones’s antagonists for averting the way of behaving like a plot device, but this guy is the exception; he seems to primarily show up to cause trouble because trouble needs to be caused.

I feel like he’d have made for a far stronger character concept if his backstory had been handled differently, being more specific in what part of his mind broke when he held the cursed lance, instead of just being “now he does bad things and talks like he’s vaguely horny throughout”.

at least he’s quite a bit entertaining in Heroes where he gets voiced lines and no particular characters or plots to interact with -- but if that’s what it takes to make the character shine, it doesn’t really say good things about him.

fuck beauty

(5.5/10)

so, the truth come out: does this guy is deserve becoming the absolute teacher’s pet he’s been since Radiant Dawn? my verdict on the matter is: not really.

I mean, Path of Radiance actually writes him into a solid niche; for all the big words he emits about being a patron of beauty, he’s ultimately just the same kind of petty, ostentatious garbage that poisons the governance of Begnion, and finally taking him down for good and all makes for an excellent dive after all the work it takes to set the light of justice on him -- not just in Day Breaks (oh gooooooooddd) but over the course of the several chapters it takes.

it’s all downhill from there, though. his appareance in Radiant Dawn is not only unecessary, but also a deviation from the established writing to focus on pallid, ineffective jokes, like someone invented Heroes writing before the thing itself happened. he fights on your side because now he genuinely cares about beauty and art to the point he’ll fight a goddess over it? yeah, that’s not who he was.

and seriously, one strongly gets the impression that, in that appearance onwards, the punchline is just supposed to be that he’s fat, bald, wordy, and has a shitty mustache -- which, besides being blatant fatphobia, is seriously stale; “it’s funny because he’s ugly” is, like, at least two random minibosses per game, usually more.

fuck the senate

(2/10)

although he jabs a lot of the buttons that should make for an entertaining and stalwart hate sink, it ends up not really working.

his narcisism lacks the performatic grandeur of the likes of Narcian; it lands as pastiche at best, and common annoying smugness at worst. and although he’s powerful and influential enough to cause a bunch of problems, he’s introduced at a weird time that fails to make his specfic capabilties relevant to opposing the protagonists, and he ends up not doing a lot more than severely inconveniencing Zelgius (who is on his team) a couple times.

at least, the battle dialogue against him in Part 4 still provides some of the most fierce drags in Radiant Dawn

fuck the valm arc

(0/10)

seriously, fuck it

but ahem, onto the guy in question: he’s an annoying waste of writing space that doesn’t seem to be intended for any reason other than making the rest of Team Bad Guy look good, plain and simple.

you might be thinking, airlock, this is the third Awakening villain you blammed in four posts, are you just biased? the answer is: yes, but even if I were being perfectly fair, let’s be real, antagonists are just not one of that game’s strengths, overall. that just happens sometimes; I can really say the same thing of like Thracia 776, y’know?

fuck playing f- yeah, okay, that’s just low-hanging fruit

(??/10)

honestly, from this distance, none of Fates’s fixed antagonists bar Anankos really give me the impression of not just being despicable pastiche, but I’m guessing he’s supposed to be the one who actually intended to take it as a niche?

so, I’m just going to assume you hated this, but how was it? are you glad it’s over, or do you regret having read it at all? we’re probably not going to be spared from one of these characters on Three Houses, but specifically how much would you like to hate the one that comes along? to be honest, your thoughts aren’t remotely as good as mine, so I wouldn’t bother replying or reblogging to share them, worm. what? you’ll do it anyway!? how dare you! do you know what I’m capable of!?