#but Lehran? Fuck him I guess

[randomnameless]

A Minor dispute.

Put it behind you. Deal with it.

No, this isn't related to devoted fans and their discourse lol (even if i had to take a jab at them with the title lol)

Ike: I have to ask, Sephiran. What are you after? What’s this all about? Sephiran: Why do you wish to know? You would achieve nothing by learning my reasons. You would help no one. I lost faith in lesser beings, and desire an end to them. That’s all. Ike: So why did you save me on that day? Sephiran: May I ask you a favor, Ike? Tell me how you feel about it now. Can you bear recalling those horrific memories? Ike: Yes… I’m fine, now. But I suppose at the time I wouldn’t have been able to take it. Sephiran: All beings endure tragedies for as long as they continue to live. It has always been the case that suffering is unavoidable. And this grim reality plays out over and over, in every country, under every ruler… As long as there are beings who feel, they will feel pain. Ike: So what? We should all just give in and die? Put it behind you. Deal with it. Sephiran: Do not make light of this… Ike: I’m not. Sephiran, I’m extremely grateful that you once helped me through a terrible time. But we have to accept that occasionally we all have to deal with hard times. I’ve had pain, I’ve had suffering, and I have gotten up and moved on. I don’t try to forget what happened that day. I just accept it… And neither that or anything else will ever stop me. Sephiran: You are a strong man, Ike, son of Gawain. But not everyone is as strong as you…

This scene is unlocked if you've seen Ike's FB.

Of course, Ike here doesn't know the fuck he is talking about, as he later expresses by wondering why Sephiran is suddenly called Lehran (maybe if the game left Miccy/Yune talk to him before the start of the map, instead of letting him do all the convo it would have been different?).

So, in a way, it isn't as callous as Ike telling Lehran to put the genocide of his people "behind him" or to "deal with it", because he doesn't know what Sephiran is talking about.

But in a way, I have the feeling if Claude or Petra told Dedue to "put the massacre of his family" behind him or to "deal with it", Claude or Petra would have received a certain amount of shit, even if, when they would have said those, they wouldn't have known what the fuck Dedue went through.

Anyways, Ike later learns what, or who, Sephiran is, and talks to him. Maybe he will apologise for his callous words, spoken when he didn't realise what he was talking about ?

Ike: Sephiran... I mean, Lehran... Lehran: I can't apologize enough. I was so terribly mistaken, and now there's nothing I can do to help. Ike: Don't worry. Lehran: What? Ike: Wanting to do something that matters is enough. Sometimes, how you feel is more important than how you act. Lehran: Ike I... there's no one that I think more highly of... Ike: No time for compliments. We still have work to do here. Lehran: Yes... yes we do.

Lehran apologises for having wanted to destroy the world (and drops Altina in a trashcan because Ike is now the person he thinks the most highly of!) - and in the general scale of things, yes, Sephiran has much to apologise for, so he better start pulling his weight and try to make up for having tried to kill everyone.

But the "your people were genocided? No biggie, deal with it!" is completely ignored - or it is, again, another example of Ike talking shit and the game convoluting himself to make sure he never faces any consequences, even if, in this situation, the consequence would just have been an apology, like the one he gave to, iirc, Mordecai and Lethe after calling him subhumans but not realising calling someone "subhuman" was insulting.

Sure, the line he gives after the fight against Sephiran still holds value :

Ike: If death is what you really want, then I’m not going to let it happen on my watch. I don’t care what you’ve gone through. I don’t care how much you’ve suffered. What you’ve done is unforgivable.

It's not because you suffered, or went through the worst humankind can offer, that you can inflict the same on people!

When Lords like Marth, Seliph, Leif, Roy, Eirika, even Elincia try to understand people and what led them to act as they did - without ever giving excuses or wondering if they could walk with their respective antagonists - Ike here refuses to understand, and only condemns.

Is it because Ike isn't a Lord, so he isn't concerned with some general "making sure this situation never happens again"?

But then, he is the one to say those :

“But, even the dumbest creatures will love their family, their friends and… even love others. They will all have things that they can’t afford to lose.” “We know that we’ve messed up. We’ll do our best to avoid more war and to make peace our highest priority. Ashera, just give us one more chance. All we ask is for one more chance.” “You were like a mother to all of life– Your children still require a mother like you. When you watch over us, we don’t always do things that make you happy and sometimes we even disappoint you. Still, I think we would like you to continue watching over us. How about it?” “We all need to work hard to accept each other. As long as we don’t try and run away from our mistakes, then I’m sure we’ll be able to see each other again one day.”

How can you do you "best" to avoid more wars, if you don't even understand why the current one started, or don't care about the reasons that led the fucker who started this current war to, well, start it?

How can we talk about acceptance if we don't "care" about what the others live through?

So, on top of writing a check his ass can't cash - since he will leave Tellius and not be there to "avoid wars" or make sure people "accept each other" after promising the goddesses "we" will exactly do that - Ike's words here are empty.

-> In a nutshell, Ike reveals with those battle quotes and conversations that he is not ruler/leader material - but we knew that since RD's start since we followed Miccy and Elincia - and more importantly isn't the kind of person asking "why" things happen, they just happen but somehow everything will work out when it will happen again - because the why, or the cause, wasn't identified - and I think it's a perfectly fitting answer for the Tellius Saga and the larger Branded "issue" : we will never know why it happens, it just happens.

(can we say the epilogue, with Ashunera returning, is an ultimate "fuck you" to Ike's empty promises at the end of this chapter, since it starts with another war happening in the background?)

---

Back to that nonsense of a battle convo, I find it really interesting how Ike is basically thanking Sephiran for having wiped his memory when he was a child, to help him "deal" with the fact he witnessed his father stab his mother, because at that time (when he was a kid), he wouldn't have been able to deal with it.

But then, Ike tells Sephiran to "deal with" the tragedies he witnessed and lived through...

After thanking him for sparing him the "deal with it" step- he now asks Sephiran to take - when he was a child.

WTF?

Ike explains how he is thankful, but he ultimately had to "got up" and "move on" from the pain, and accept it. And that's precisely the point, Ike managed to take on that pain, "get up and move on" thanks to Sephiran's own meddling and help - else, by his own admission, he wouldn't have been able to "take it".

But now, he asks Sephiran to take his pain, without any magic amnesia to help, and deal with it?

And while I hate the idea of trauma olympics, grown-up Ike (even in POR) can now deal with the fact his dad killed his mother thanks to Lehran's magic amnesia - but he tells Lehran to deal with and get over - 1) the genocide of his tribe, 2) assassination of his great (etc) granddaughter because she had his blood, 3) the loss of his powers for a crap reason and the knowledge that laguz are bound to "die" if they mingle too much with beorcs as he personally witnessed it, 4) severe depression after realising he is not a laguz anymore but not even a beorc since beorcs will use pitchforks at him even if they regarded him 10 seconds before as sage, and the rest of Tellius' general fuckery? - without magic amnesia or plot hax?

Reyson was very close to pull something similar in FE9 when he tried to erase people in the Forest using "ancient magic", but abandoned the idea when Leanne was found - if PoR!Ike learnt that, would he have told Reyson to "get over" the heron genocide and Naesala's betrayal?

Of course not, because I'm pretty sure Ike knows, before meeting Reyson and even picking Leanne, what happened in Serenes.

And in RD, when he says those words, he doesn't know (but he later will!) that Sephiran is a heron.

Tl;Dr :

Supreme Leader's "minor dispute" is frowned upon by everyone, even if she might genuinely not know about what Nemesis did that made Rhea so enraged, in a doylist reading, Supreme Leader is a character who ignores a genocide to push her own specist agenda.

Doylist reading of that RD scene is, Ike telling Sephiran to man up and deal/get over the genocide of his people - but unlike Supreme Leader, when he comes to learn the truth of Sephiran's despair, he dgaf.

Thankfully, this scene is only triggered if Sephiran survives, so Ike can later explain his behaviour : he doesn't care what kind of suffering Sephiran endured, since nothing justifies what he was trying to do (kill everyone).

Even if the thing he should care, but doesn't want to, is, for part, a genocide.

[aloneditee]

Sephiran and Zelgius Timeline UPDATED

Instead of just having a jumbled idea of the timeline of sephiran and zelgius's relationship I decided I was going to spend my day off writing up my idea of how their timeline works based on cannon information with my own little headcannon flair because i can and you can't stop me.

*THANK YOU VERY MUCH TO @theia-eos FOR COMMENTING WITH THE RADIANT DAWN ARTBOOK TIMELINE I HAVE USED IT TO UPDATE THIS TIMELINE WITH MORE ACCURATE INFORMATION* I also had to remove some sentences because tumblr gave me a fuckin character limit while editing this for some reason

Key:

Bold = explicit canon

unbold = rough estimate canon/ guess

italics = headcanon

urple = sephzelg highlight reel (gay thoughts)

red = year

Complete timeline after the keep reading thing:

625: Misaha’s assassination and the serenes massacre → lehran villain arc. Lehran presents the medallion to ashnard and enters daeins service under the guise of a “wise man”

626: “daeins sudden change” → this is likely when the bloodpact began its effects and the deaths of the daein royal family. I THINK THIS IS WHEN SEPHIRAN AND ZELGIUS MET

Zelgius was serving in the Daein army under general Gawain for a few years. While sephiran is serving as a wise man under ashnard's father he meets zelgius and zelgius confides in him and they agree to be with each other when zelgius eventually leaves the daien army.

Later that year Gawain dips out of Daein with Elena. Zelgius despairs that his Master left him. Zelgius would then enter sephirans service.

627: Ashnard becomes the king of daein, (This was originally when I thought zelgius joins sephiran but I found out Gawain actually left BEFORE Ashnard became king according to the radiant dawn artbook).

I assume Sephiran leaves Ashnards service after Ashnard gets what he wants. Seph doesnt fuck with his bad vibes.

627~635: Sephiran and Zelgius do a bit of travelling and make plans for big evil or something. Sephiran still being a travelling sage and zelgius being a knight not connected to any army until he joins the Begnion military perhaps a decade later

During this time sephiran scaffolds information about himself and his past to zelgius. I do genuinely think that sephiran eventually opens up about everything to zelgius (and vice versa) including him being lehran and the origin of the branded.

634: assuming ike is around 7 when his mom died, this would be around the time point where Gawain touched the medallion and lehran and zelgius saw the aftermath. 

The reason why I think ike is 7 years old here (*he's born in 628*) is because that is how old soren would have been too according to his own timeline (based on his support convos), and those two met the day before the gawain medallion shenanigan occurred

Idrk when seph and zel join begnion as dukes. Based off of the artbook zelgius was actually born into a begnion family before fleeing to daein so maybe he reclaimed the cador family name or something. Sephiran claimed to be from a long line of mages (Persis) and somehow become a noble through this so called mage lineage.

637: sephzelg 10 yr anniversary

635: Sanaki is born. Sephiran may or may not be a senator at this stage

Sephiran begins to rise up the senate ranks through rizz and zelgius rises up the army ranks

At some point between 635-640: sanakis parents are killed by the senate probably

640: sanaki (5 years old) becomes the empress of begnion and sephiran becomes the “senate leader” aka prime minister 

the event lekain talks about when sanaki would stfu during formal proceedings and they discover sephiran has insane babysitting skills occurs right after sanaki becomes the empress i think

645: beginning of mad kings war. At this point in time sephiran and zelgius would have been together for around 18-19 years

Black knight shenanigans. Sephiran travels tellius and gathers intel

Sepiran gets captured in crimea by daein military, probably waited for zelgius to go save him hence why he wouldnt fucking move when ike rescued him lmao

Black knight scraps ranulf, sephiran steps in and tells black knight to stand down

Sephiran eventually returns to begnion, tells everyone to get their fucking shit together, sends zelgius to go help ike (black knight still be existing). Zelgius’ group stays in daein while ikes group goes to crimea. BK does multiple warcrimes in the meant

646: Nados castle falls on the black knight. Sephiran rescues him and uses is epic healing skills to get zelgius to recover before the battle between ikes team and ashnard in the final chapter

646: End mad kings war. Sephiran annoys the shit out of ike by laughing at him for no reason. The black knight is “defeated”. Sephzelg 20 year anniversary aww

646-648: new evil world ending plan just launched

648: war part 2 electric boogaloo

Summer 648: Black knight return arc, sephiran is set to go to daein and tell jarod to stop being a cunt or something but gets thrown in jail before he got the chance to????

Autumn 648: Sephiran captured by the senate while zelgius is at war doing war stuff

Zelgius saves sephiran from jail part 2 electric boogaloo and the two of them start a cheeky uprising in bengion.

Zelgius and sephiran made a pact to die together in the tower. I think they made this agreement way in advance and they knew that was the end goal no matter what happens.

Winter 648: zelgius vs ike gay on gay violence. Zelgius dies. Sephiran either also dies or lives. pain and suffering

~1848: Ashunera returns. Lehran may or may not be there to greet her. Hope he dies soon

[calamitaswrath]

Lucia plays Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn: Part 3 Prologue

Ohhh, Ike and the others are back at the fort! Same map and everything! Which they totally had to rebuild after burning it down in PoR, which definitely happened :)

The game is really slipping back into the family dynamics of the mercenaries very easily. On the one hand, I missed this lot, but on the other. . . I really would have liked to spend more time with Micaiah and the Dawn Brigade.

And here's the setup for our next war! And damn, they're really continuing to lean into the Begnion senators being blatantly evil. Killing messengers and everything. . .

Skrimir really is the "no thoughts head empty" kinda guy, huh? Anyway, I think I've seen him before, but I'm pretty sure I mentally conflated him with his- Oh, he's not even his son, but his nephew? Okay.

Base conversations! They're really introducing the chemistry between Ike and Ranulf early here. Without having seen their supports in PoR, it was only kind of there in the main story, but here. . . wasting no time.

The one with Oscar cooking - Ike's really the kind of person who'd go "if there's no meat left I'll eat the vegetarians".

Mist's base conversation - uhh, following up on her reaction to her father's death from last game. . . well done.

So the actual battle. . . jesus fucking christ. The map design and enemies weren't that bad, but the way the enemy phase and ally phase took forever. . . there were like 20 ally units and I always had to watch every single one of their moves. The game tends to do this a lot, I feel - Part 2 also had two of those maps where you had a ton of allies.

I'm with Soren here. Skrimir is giving stupid speeches.

Ah, we're introducing the whole plot point of Lehran's medallion quite openly here. But I suppose after the whole last game was spent slowly building up to it, it wouldn't make much sense being coy about it. This being a FE game, it being unleashed is just about inevitable though, I guess.

And now last but not least:

Jesus. Fucking. Christ.

[littleshotsofsalvation]

SHOW ME YOUR CIPHER CARDS YOU SILLY!!!

Okay FINE i guess i will or whatever featuring bad quality pictures and my poor card book thats. so old

hehe henry go brrr he has CROWS and is drawn by TOBI  whats not to love. AND THE LIGHTING AND THE RED. i kin him

from magvel we have my beautiful wife maris posed stunningly with her sword and looking like the badass swordmaster she is, and then baby ewan! little son ewan, who looks super cute, and agh i love one flame mage 

HIGHKET THE NEMESIS CIPHER IS SO COOL HIS BEARD IS SO GOOD. THE POSE WITH THE CREATOR SWORD. YOU BEAUTIFUL CRUSTY OLD BASTARD. THE PURPLE IS JUST MWAH

then we have marianne and hilda, do not se[perate them, also hildas axe. wow. its so. wow. also hhghgnggn i love her!!!! hehe hilda. im gay 

okay hopping over to tellius rq

we got haar napping with his wyvern wih fucking CHEESE i love him. hes done nothing wrong. and the little flowers :)

i love lesbians!! also i guess geoffrey is there. aksfajn fr though lucia is so lovely. and elincia looks so precious!!! and theyre dating.

and now. my favourite cards. 

ike. does this one even need an explanation? ill make the shrine soon

the only shiny card i decided to buy, the medallion bc OH MY GOD i love this one,,, yune sleeping on the medallion bc shes sealed there, lehran and micaiah facing away from each other, and then ashera!!! ah!!!!!

and this is. technically three cards but its a set and oh my GOD 

MY SON BOY LEIF AND PRECIOUS SELIPH AND THE EDGELORD ARES WEHH THEYRE SO CUTE!!! AND MAYO ART?? I LOVE THEM SO MUCH. I LOVE THEM THEYRE THE STARS OF MY COLLECTION?? I LOVE THEM SM THEYRE SO AMAZING

[dcmcboxers]

sepia-schattentau replied to your photoset: wip dump because finishing things is hard?

So we’re allowed to ask for context? Because I’m interested

yeah! the last wip is just a study but the first two have to do with a canon divergence idea for por based mostly on the fact that im sad there was no ashnard soren interaction in por, and also the potential for more angst i guess. i wouldnt want them to give the plot twist away but it would have been cool if they had some kind of boss convo (maybe it hadnt quite been planned out at the time but i feel like they the idea was there).

whoops this got long

Anyways, so the basic idea is that soren would be kidnapped and brought to the crimean capital motivated by izuka’s interest in experimenting on branded. there are rumors that a branded is among the crimean army and a) nasir is already blackmailed into being their spy and can confirm this (and that its soren) and b) soren would be a good person to remove from the crimean army because of how successful his tactics are etc. Nasir ends up facilitating both the retrieval of lehran’s medallion and soren (big sorry nasir). once hes presented in front of ashnard, he recognizes soren as his bastard child and decides to fuck with him by telling soren he’s his dad. and decides he could maybe use him for a while to see if he was wrong in deeming soren useless when he was born. more of a morbid curiosity thing. so soren has the option of either providing tactical information and assistance to daein or immediately getting sent to gritnea tower. Soren chooses to provide information and tries to believably give wrong info while also figuring out a way to escape. if youve ever read this fic called “The Universe In Your Arms” its honestly kinda like the situation in that. Ashnard decides he’s still unimpressed with him and is more interested in seeing what the feral drug does and drops the pretense. Soren gets sent to the tower, bad drug shit happens, and eventually ike and everyone arrives at the tower. ike finds him in that horrific dungeon and soren tries to attack him but its good because reyson can fix him.