#but now FE16 exists so

[randomnameless]

I stumbled across one of your posts from a while ago where, in the tags, you compared Seteth caring more about Rhea telling Byleth the truth than whether or not she was safe at the end of Silver Snow to Kaze defecting to Nohr because of Corrin, in terms of the awfulness of the avatar worship.

While i agree with the former case being bad, i actually think that Kaze's defection is much more well-justified than Seteth suddenly caring more about Byleth than Rhea.

A fundamental part of Kaze's backstory and character is that he feels an immense amount of guilt for failing to save Corrin from being kidnapped by Nohr when he was supposed to be guarding them, to the point of said guilt getting him killed in Birthright if he doesn’t learn to move past his regrets and focus on the present by having a heart-to-heart with Corrin in their A-support; that, coupled with the fact that he only joins after personally witnessing Corrin go out of their way to avoid killing enemy soldiers, which concinces him that Corrin's plan to change Nohr from the inside in order to make it more a more peaceful place is true, makes it less avatar worship and more just a natural development for Kaze's estabilished character, imo.

Where i do think his motivation starts faltering is that the game doesn't really put in enough effort to address Kaze's feelings after Corrin's plan falls through and they have to go to war against Hoshido; the closest it gets to that is having him tell Corrin that siding with Hoshido wouldn't necessarily have been the best choice and that both Nohr and Hoshido think that they're fighting for the sake of justice in Chapter 17 of Conquest: (jp version, translated by fateswartable)

Kamui: ….

Suzukaze: Lady Kamui…

Kamui: Sorry, Suzukaze. Joining me must be painful for you.

Suzukaze: N- No, that’s…!

Kamui: Saizou, Kagerou… And all of the Hoshido shinobi defeated today… If I chose another path, we could have fought together.

Suzukaze: …That’s right. But, that doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the right way. Both Hoshido and Nohr too are fighting for justice. That’s something everyone should know. Even brother, surely.

Kamui: Yes… Thank you, Suzukaze…

While Kaze growing to think of Nohr as also fighting for it's own justice through his time living in the country, causing him to choose to fight for it over Hoshido, is an interesting direction to take his character in, it's kinda undercut by the fact that, not only does this development happen entirely off-screen, but that Kaze has no presence in Conquest's plot afterwards; the game never develops or expands on his newfound motivation after Chapter 17, forcing players to just settle for a throwaway line and the fact that he still feels bad for failing to protect Corrin as the only reasons why he's willing to fight and kill his own brother and former allies.

It's underdeveloped, to be sure, but i wouldn't call it a flaw caused by avatar worship, and certainly not as bad as Seteth, out of nowhere, not giving a fuck about Rhea's safety or location and only caring about her insofar as what she can tell Byleth about their origins.

Oh !

TBH, Fates's avatar wanking looks.... tame, compared to FE16 Supreme Leader wanking and Billy wanking.

But it's still... there.

I was re-reading the RD battle/talk quotes from Part 3, where Miccy's army and Ike's army fight, and how some people choose to fight against others for, uh, reasons -

Some Daien people are fighting because their king does, some do because the believe in Miccy and, well, some (Nailah, Kurth and Rafiel) know the truth, and how Miccy can't back down, else her people will die.

Nohr fighting for its own Justice in CQ always felt, well. Corrin saved Kaze, and wants to change Nohr from the inside.

However, in CQ (my mind is foggy?) Nohr is, iirc, invading Hoshido. It's not like a war where someone wants to erase someone else or pissed on a diplomatic proposal asking for reparations for a genocide, nope. In FE14, Nohr kills the Hoshidan Queen, and in CQ, well, conquers/invades Hoshido.

Even if Kaze learnt and witnessed how Nohrians aren't baby eating monsters in their everyday life (save for iago) why and how is them invading Hoshido any form of "justice"? Mc Guffin here and there means Gooron has to sit on the Hoshidan throne to turn into goo - and yet, even if deposing Gooron is the best thing to do to change Nohr from the inside, how can this (invasion to depose) be justified and bought by a Hoshidan as "Justice" and acceptable?

Maybe I'm too used to the FE14 lolcalisation, but Kaze pulling the "justice" card here is oddly reminiscent of Tru Piss Sylvain (I think?) who says they can't reason with the Kingdom they're invading because each party fights for their beliefs like Faerghus just wanting to exist

If Kaze became a green unit like Aerone or Gale (in FE6 iirc?) and died due to Iago Iago-ing or Hans Hans-ing I'd have prefered it to him joining on Conquest because of his guilt regarding Corrin and "witnessing him sparing soldiers". And yet, buying the "everyone fights for their own justice" and choosing Norh is, idk, strange. Maybe it would have been better if, as you said, his change of heart wasn't off-screen...

Coming from FE10 to FE14 was already kind of ultra meh in terms on dealing with the unit that became a turncoat, but FE16 takes it to new heights.

So yeah, I was exaggerating when I compared the Billy worship to Kaze lol, but I thought about it because it's the only pair of siblings I remember where an avatar inserts themselves in an existing relationship and effectively severs it.

Seteth not giving any fucks about Rhea (and to some extent, Flayn too, she's not mentionned in their A-S support, when, maybe shipping googles make a bit biased, his support with Manu talking about remarriage mention his daughter!) is completely wild, but just like everything in FE16, characters, the plot and the lore can be forgotten and torn apart if it means the player can be pandered to, via Billy or Supreme Leader.

[gaslightgatekeepgirlbosscombat]

Group E, Round 3, Poll 3:

Propaganda under the cut

Lady Rhea

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE GAME AHEAD This lady gaslighted, gatekept, and girlbossed for a little more than 1000 years. Her story starts in ancient Fódlan where she was a member of a magical dragon race called the Nabateans, children of Sothis. After Sothis was killed and her corpse desecrated by a bandit named Nemesis (who believed himself to be fighting for the freedom of humanity), he made a sword out of her body to arm his allies and massacred the Nabateans. Rhea gathered the last few Nabateans left and some human allies and, under the name 'Seiros', waged war on Nemesis and his army. Victorious, Saint Seiros rewrote history to cover up the existence of the Nabateans and created a religion around her mother, now calling Sothis the Progenitor God. As the years go on, Lady Rhea used her holy influence to give rise to the Adrestrian Empire. It's implied that her church, the Church of Seiros, played a part in wars that resulted in the creation of the Holy Kingdom of Faergus, a nation that broke off of Adrestria, and the Leicester Alliance, another nation which broke off of the Kindgom. FE16 makes a point to note that she continues to censor history up to the present, including limiting technological advancements for 'blasphemy'. Her advisor, Seteth, once served her as Saint Cichol and even he has shown shock and horror at how far she has gaslit, gatekept, and girlbossed. The protagonist of this game is the child of Sitri, the 12th human vessel in a project that Lady Rhea personally conducted to try and revive her mother. Rhea never admits this to the protag's face until she is either in a weakened state or an enemy of the protagonist. She even tries to restart the experiment on the protag without their knowledge. The game splits into four routes and in one of them the protagonist turns on Rhea. In this route Lady Rhea girlbosses so hard that she turns into a dragon and reclaims her Saint Seiros persona as she tries to kill the protag and reclaim her mother who, at this point, exists as a weapon the protagonist wields and as an organ Lady Rhea implanted into them as a baby. In two of the routes where the protagonist sides with Lady Rhea she'll accompany them to combat the forces that orriginally allowed Nemesis to attack her peeople (who have turned into a highly advanced underground race at this point). This girlboss moment is so cool to me because Lady Rhea had been a prisoner for 5 years but still manages to turn into a dragon and take a literal ICBM to the face to protect the protag. TL;DR: Lady Rhea has gaslit society and made a fake history. She gatekept by personally executing members of her own church she made because she disagreed with their ways. She girlbosses by being the Archbishop of her religion for 1159 years and turning into a dragon to KILL "

She created a thousand year old church to control an entire continent. She rewrote history to be able to control the continent and keep the power she gained, under a belief that she was all that could protect humans from themselves.

The ULTIMATE example of gaslight gatekeep girlboss!! (((Major FE3H spoilers))): Gaslight: constructs an entire centuries-old religion centered around her dead mom with herself as the leader, hides the identity of herself (secretly the founding saint and namesake of said religion) and her compatriots (secretly other major saints), rewrites continent’s history as well as the origin of the nobility’s hereditary crests and holy relics, hires homeschooled mercenary seemingly for nepotism/skill reasons but doesn’t tell them that she actually implanted her mother’s heart into them as an infant in hopes to revive her dead mom. Gatekeep: intentionally withholds continent’s secret history, church covers up and censors some of humanity’s technological/medical advancements in order to obscure aforementioned history as well as to prevent the development of more efficient weapons of war/destruction, instructs faculty and students not to leak dangerous side effects of powerful holy relics to the wider public, executes rebels/assassins/conspirators that seek to remove her, literally hires a Gatekeeper known only as Gatekeeper. Girlboss: Canonically bisexual pope with hips for days and de facto leader of an entire continent. Powerful warrior. Proficient in instructing hand-to-hand combat. The first cutscene of the game shows her sword-fighting in heels with a muscular man and, after being disarmed, beating the shit out of him in hand-to-hand combat and stabbing him to death with a dagger. Girlboss.

Morag Ladair

She is an inquisitor for a despotic colonizing empire, who is ruthlessly efficient, a master manipulator, and also a genuinely charming characters. She creates a rumor of the execution of a party member to successfully lure out the rest of them, and they only escape because she chooses to let them go

[gascon-en-exil]

How Knives in Three Houses Could Have Worked

I've had this thought for a post for quite some time. Knives are probably my favorite secondary weapon type in FE, and after Fates made them so interesting and powerful I was disappointed to see Three Houses remove them in favor of brawling (but it also came with the return of light magic and pseudo-Catholic classes - IS gives and IS takes). But now we have Engage which has both, so...what would FE16 have looked like if it had had knives as well?

Stats and Parameters

Knives in Three Houses would have been a natural evolution of their appearance in Fates: low might but with reliable 1-2 range. Let's say IS came up with the concept of Engage knives a little early, and so had the poison mechanic as well as stronger, 1 range knives (which were also present in Radiant Dawn). Knives would have very low might, comparable to gauntlets only without the auto-brave effect, although 1 range knives would be only slightly weaker than swords of similar rank to compensate for the lack of versatility. Knives could also replace spells in the secondary weapon triangle (gauntlets > magic > bows > gauntlets), because magic has always seemed a bit awkward grouped in with those as it's a completely different system.

Although Engage has wolf knights, I prefer that knives be unusable by mounted units, like gauntlets, because the alternative seems a bit silly. That said, unlike gauntlets knives could be used by pure magic classes, and indeed would be a solid options for casters who don't want to expend spell uses and still want to debuff the enemy while attacking safely from range. There would also be at least one magic knife to match the other magic weapons, which would be particularly helpful for certain mage characters with knife boons (see below).

Class Changes

Myrmidon would be available with either a sword or knife rank, like how fighter and monk work already.

Thief, assassin, and trickster would have their sword requirements changed to knives. This would also remove the need for trickster's odd thief prerequisite, as the two classes would be more strongly tied together by their weapon type. Assassin would of course have Swordfaire replaced with Knifefaire.

Archer would boost knives rather than swords, to facilitate archer -> assassin

The master tier would be the most difficult, as I don't want to alter mortal savant and none of the other existing classes are really viable knife wielders. Instead, I'd add another class based on Fates's master ninja, with knife and sword requirements. Dread fighter, maybe? It would have Knifefaire, Stealth, and...some other new class skill, possibly one based around improving poison damage.

Boons and Budding Talents

Probably the most interesting thing to consider, as we get to talk about characters. I will be adhering to the unspoken rule in-game that no character can have more than three weapon boons, with budding talents included. That means that if I think a character would have had a knife boon but already has three weapon boons, one of them will have to removed to compensate.

Hubert - an obvious choice, a personal favorite, and half the reason I even thought of this concept. If three weapon boons (with lances/bows) is too much for a primary mage character, then I'd remove his boon in bows which in his case feels like a stand-in for the lack of knives anyway.

Linhardt - in the actual game Linhardt stands out as the only character to not have a single weapon boon, so let's give him one. It can be his budding talent, as something he'd pick up later despite his hemophobia because of his inspiring self-insert teacher, etc.

Petra - her "canon" class is thief/assassin, and she's a dagger unit in her only Heroes appearance, so this is a natural fit. I'd drop her sword boon to make room, leaving her with bows for assassin and axes for wyvern rider which is also semi-canonical for her (at least in terms of wearing her unique outfit)

Ashe - a former thief, and he has assassin available in Cindered Shadows. He already has three weapon boons, so I'd see him drop axes so he can keep his bow focus as well as his lance budding talent as a reflection of his aspirations to knighthood.

Ignatz - a bit unusual, but he's got room for a third weapon boon and this way he's still got a path to trickster for the support role for which he's more designed.

Leonie - if only to give her boons more diversity than simply the list of bow knight requirements, and to further distinguish her from Jeralt. Also, hunters use knives.

Hanneman and Manuela - I think both of them could use knife boons, in each case replacing an existing weapon boon that would no longer seem thematically necessary: bows for Hanneman, swords for Manuela. For Manuela they make sense as a medical instrument, whereas Hanneman can lean into the idea of knives as an off-weapon for mages. More comically, this would also make for a more natural lead-in to a meme build like Aura Knuckles Hanneman.

Shamir - similar to Leonie, it would suit her as a hunter/assassin...but Shamir's boons and banes are structured to parallel Catherine's, so I'd remove her random lance boon to preserve that dynamic.

Yuri - the most obvious fit of all, as he's a dagger unit in Heroes and they suit the thief/trickster identity perfectly. He can even still keep his sword boon, as he's got space for it.

Banes

These are a tougher call, but I can identify a few logical choices. In some cases I'd swap out an existing bane so I don't feel like I'd be nerfing the character too much.

Ferdinand - yes, this would actually give Ferdinand a bane and would remove him from the exclusive club of characters without them, but he already stands above the rest with his number of boons. Also, this would make for entertaining contrast with Hubert - and a parallel with his tea friend Lorenz who already has a single weapon bane to his name.

Caspar - swap out his bane in bows for one here, to better parallel Linhardt.

Raphael - similar to Caspar, changing his bane in bows to one in knives better highlights his lack of precision and preference for the brute force approach (I'd do this for Edelgard's bow bane too, but the house leaders' banes seem to have been designed with each other's in mind so it's worth keeping).

Seteth - either swap it out for his riding bane (kind of weird that he has this when cavalier is in his base class set) or just add to what he's already got, because Seteth's doing fairly well either way. As with Ferdinand, it would match his straightforward approach to combat and dislike of subterfuge.

Gilbert - I really don't want to give him a bane, as the lack of them is one of the things that allows Gilbert to be nowhere near as much of a headache as Jeritza when it comes to 100%, but it is still a bit odd that this guy has no banes to speak of.

Hapi - as a replacement for her random brawling bane, I think this works, setting her apart from the other female characters unfortunate enough to have brawling and heavy armor banes (Bernadetta and Marianne) while also not giving her a bane in the weapon type that is her friend Constance's budding talent.

That's 10 boons and 6 banes. For reference, in the actual game 10 characters have brawling boons and 5 have banes - so that's reasonable.

Regrettably, I have a pretty good guess as to why knives were left out of Three Houses, related to Koei-Tecmo's involvement and the difficulty of using such small weapons in the big, flashy sorts of attacks favored by Warriors games...but still I can dream, right?

[pegasusknightsonly]

i have to put something here to make the cut work

just saw someone say that Felix and Dimitri "were best friends". now. come on. that is literally not true. Felix and Sylvain? probably friends. Felix and Ingrid? no. Felix does not befriend women. but Felix and Dimitris support establishes that pre-academy Felix and Dimitri had not spoken for over two years and that Felix mostly knew Dimitri via Glenn, who was close enough to Dimitri that his death was emotionally devastating for Dimitri. Felix and Sylvain's support establishes that Felix spent more time with Sylvain than he did Dimitri, because Dimitri was so often with Glenn. Dimitri and Ingrid mostly talk about Glenn! Ingrid compares Glenn and Felix and Dimitri turns the conversation back to just Glenn!!!! it is in fact explicitly stated multiple times that Dimitri was much, much closer to Glenn than he ever was to Felix and that Felix and Ingrid mostly knew Dimitri *via Glenn* !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

actually im going to sidebar here i just read Felixs supports with Ingrid Dimitri and Sylvain to see if i was actively losing in my mind in remembering the game specifically establishing that Felix and Dimitri were never emotionally close and he is so fucking unpleasant. none of those were fun to read. he's not even just being blunt or being unintentionally rude he is constantly, deliberately, putting other people down and insulting them and belittling them. he is capable of being nice to people! he's nice to Annette and to Flayn and to Lysithea and to Bernadetta and he really likes Leonie (good taste) but he is so fucking genuinely vile to Ingrid and Dimitri and Sylvain that i forget that he can be civil to people and i want him to die. "best friends". you are huffing paint milord

sidebar sidebar: (in a monotone, as if reciting this from cue cards) the "faerghus four" is a fandom invention based on misreading and extrapolating the actual text of the game in order to diminish the importance of the relationship between Dimitri and Dedue. it is made very clear at multiple points that Dimitri's actual close friends were Glenn, who is dead, and Dedue. (normal voice intonation resumes) DONT GET ME WRONG i dont think fe16 fandom needs another white man to prioritise and i see far too much of Glenn as is but the fact that his absence is so crucial to all of Dimitri's pre-existing relationships *except with Dedue who is the only person he knew pre-academy who does not remind Dimitri of Glenn* is not, like, accidental!!! the text of the game is right there!!! you can read the exact words from the script right here on the internet at houses.fedatamine.com !!!!!!

stop lying!!!!!!!!! Felix and Dimitri were not "best friends"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! stop fucking lying about something so easily disproven!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! check for open solvents in your room!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[randomnameless]

I second the point about Earl Grey - how can Fodlan be an Earl Grey Masterpiece (tm) compared to, say, that silly Engage game, if we have an evil cult of evil racist supremacists who are behind everything wrong (tm) in the world?

Due to Supreme Leader bias or pandering, the devs still wrote the benevolent dragons and their influence to be BaD and needing ReFoRmAtIoN because, uh, reasons - even in VW which is, imo, one of the reasons why this route is so flawed and needed Rhea to die off-screen for the route to ultimately end - which makes the story look really off : if Agarthans are the reason why everything goes wrong in Fodlan (because random people can't even be asses to each other, as Nopes demonstrated, everything was engineered by Agarthans!), why are the Nabateans, depicted as benevolent and helping humans - if not reacting strongly when people try to kill them even if the plot takes great measures not to give them to much light - universally decried - as in, their legacy (the CoS) cannot continue to exist in the way it was at the beginning of the game (you know, when Agarthans and their allies wrre wrecking shit up) and must be "reformed" under Billy's guidance?

Fodlan points at the CoS being "BaD" because characters who diss them are never challenged, because the CoS itself never gets a chance to explain why they do X or Y or the game weirdly frames it as wrong (remember Caspar being upset because people who, uh, tried to rob a site and killed unarmed students are executed???), and ultimately, is always "ReFoRmEd" or "changes" for the "better" at the end of the war.

So, despite showing us all the relative benevolent things they do, given how the narrative pisses on them at every second, the treatment of the CoS is seen as peak "morally earl grey" - when, imo, it's just nonsensical writing made to pretend two lords have a point.

On the opposite end of the spectrum - bar Supreme Leader's skewed priorities in FE16 - we have nothing remotely positive to say/read/discover about Agarthans, they're racial supremacists, they commended a genocide - even if Epi frowns a bit at Thales' methods, he still wants to save and calls Nemesis'n'his Elites "allies" while calling the Nabateans "spawn of the abomination" or "wretches"... -

So we end with one faction the game depicts as "Trust me they BaD even if I always show the inverse" and another as "shown and told to be BaD" - that's where the logical fallacy from the Earl Grey falls apart : if one faction is told to be BaD despite showing things they do that are GoOd, the opposite faction should... also be kind of the same, or at least, not be told and shown to be BaD, right?

I get trying to make Fodlan more interesting and escaping the binary writing of the games and setting by having HC or fanfics giving more meat to Agarthans...

But in the canon material, even if Nopes wasted its WoH paralogue on depicting the Agarthan PoV out of everything they could have came up with, the Agarthans we see (Cleo, Myson, Thales, Kronya Epi, Solon, etc) are relatively one-note and way more nefarious to Fodlan and its people than whatever the Nabateans are presumably doing.

But hey, the Earl Grey veneer regarding the CoS (and Nabateans, because as a race they must be wrong Supreme Leader said so) really took its hold on the fandom (special mention to Rhage!) - It used to annoy me but now I laugh at it, when some people, let it be on YT comments or whatnot complain about the game not showing the dark side of the CoS or the Nabateans doing things that'd make the conflict less one-sided : while they understand the framing of the CoS and Nabs is artificial and hammered without any substance, instead of wondering why this is so artificial, they have the inverse reasoning : the game was afraid of making Rhea/the CoS look bad by not showing the so-called atrocities the totally not biased characters say about them -> believing the totally not biased totes reliable characters over, well, what they can play and see and read in various flavour texts as a player.

"Why don't we see the CoS being more racist and/or forbidding contact with outside, leashing out Gilbert's brother for trading with Albinea?"

Maybe because the person who says the Church promotes isolationism is full of crap and doesn't even know what he is talking about? Even in his end support blurb ?

I'd also say this also is a result of Nopes - which felt, on that regard, a bit more "well-written" than Houses since they dropped (but not totally, it's a Fodlan game after all!) all pretenses of "telling us the CoS is BaD" - Claude and Supreme Leader piss on the CoS ? Fine, let them do their stuff, but AG will have NPCs, characters and supports (Dedue'n'Cat) contradicting everything the other two routes are parroting/saying.

Of course the characters will never be challenged on that front, and Dimitro exists because this is still a Fodlan game - and yet the less "hypocritical" side of the writing is shown in this game : in Golden Shower, we're left wondering for reasons why the CoS needs to be eliminated, Claude's faulty reasonings can be poked with a spoon (even if no one uses any in his army, save for Barney's ominous lines) and it just comes as a one-sided hatred and tantrum an asshat is throwing because, uh, why not, coupled with racist stereotypes and a big dose of "I'm going to remove the outdated customs of that land I'm invading with my army" stench.

Supreme Leader? Does Supreme Leader things, backstabs the CoS - who lent their help when she asked them to lol - and while we witness an assassination attempt from the CoS in this route, well, it's against her, the main instigator of this war, something even Larva spells out! This route ends with the CoS making the big sacrifices to get rid of the big bad (Thales) this path first identified, ignoring Supreme Leader in the process.

So in those two routes littered with various "but Church BaD trust us" we end up with people questionning the Lord who is depicted as a petulant shit head, and... the CoS having a big sacrifice/heroic moment at the end to defeat the bigger foes, the Agarthans.

-> Nopes ends (maybe against its initial will as a game centered on Agarthan narrative?) on a better appreciation/note/feeling for Nabateans and the CoS, despite having two routes siding against them.

Compare with Houses, who always removes Nabateans/Rhea of the picture (except in SS's S support) and brings "reforms" to the CoS - because it needed some, even if we will never know what they are or why those reforms were needed.

If by playing FE16 some people got the feeling Nabateans and Agarthans were, uh, as bad as the other because Supreme Leader said so, those same people might have been frustrated playing Nopes because, hey, in Nopes, the game is more or less telling you that, no, Nabateans try to help protect and save Fodlan, when the Agarthans are hell bent on destroying it and everyone who isn't them!

Mind you, Claude's route made some people feel bad for Nabateans/Rhea/the CoS, because of his insistence that they must be destroyed because "reasons" when all of his assurance that they have to be destroyed comes from thin air and we're shown AND told they aren't... doing the things Claude accuses them for.

Nopes ruins the Earl Grey veneer FE16 built to demonise the CoS, so by extension, if Supreme Leader's priorities have to make some sense in FE16 (funny how Claude can be called an idiot or moron, but Supreme Leader might just be called 'misguided'), the Nabateans have to be a least a bit bad, or really really bad so siding with the Agarthans isn't completely bonkers.

Ergo : For the Agarthans to be a "viable" option to ally with, their common enemies, the Nabateans, must be demonised, even moreso than what FE16 and its subsequent fandom/fanworks tried to because Nopes hammered again that Nabateans are protectors/siding with humans who don't want to fight/war for "reasons".

Tl;Dr : some people cannot accept that their "Earl Grey" masterpiece is pretty straightforward, and all of this "earl grey" exists in their own fanon because they do not like what the canon is telling, and refuse to make the difference between fanon and canon.

I keep thinking about how people want the Agarthans to be victims. Not so much that people are saying they did nothing wrong, but a lesser evil compared to Rhea and the Nabateans. I'd ask myself why people would want such a thing, as even in the route where you side with them they're made out to be evil that will be exterminated, but I wouldn't have to think about why that as. The answer is simple, they validate Edelgard's killing of Rhea.

And, really, it fits with stuff I've seen since the game came out. The people claiming that despite Silver Snow and Verdant Wind being routes where big reveals to the lore are given to the player they, alongside Azure Moon, lie to the player and that Edelgard is the only one to tell them “the truth.” Or that said lore pops out of canon once the player decides to side with Edelgard. They want to ignore that the same route not only paints Edelgard as a liar often enough that a chapter titled “Lady of Deceit” begins and ends with her lying to her army, but also reveals that Edelgard herself knows that her source was an Agarthan puppet yet she is still clinging to that narrative. They'll claim it's all a matter of what the player believes to be true and tell people to disregard the game's creators saying that they built Fodlan to support the story of Silver Snow, and that while Flower is about believing something else, how that leads to not only mowing down everyone who stands in your way because of those beliefs but also ends up with tyranny and oppression under the path of supremacy.

Or we'll get people who ignore that Claude's route talks about how we need to let go of misconceptions we may have about others by getting to know them, and how Claude's misconceptions about the Church may have been caused by the Agarthans feeding him info to turn him against Rhea. No, instead Claude is a manipulative schemer who should have killed Rhea as his final boss after learning about her past and how his ancestors profited off the slaughter of her people, and that Golden Wildfire is who Claude really is and his good route.

Because people want to believe that Houses is this morally grey game, where everyone is a hero from their POV. But let's look at that. As mentioned, Claude's POV blaming the Church is ultimately framed as him having misconceptions, and once he got to know them he realized that Rhea didn't have to be his enemy in achieving his goals. Not only that, he realizes the Agarthans tried to manipulate him like he says they did to Edelgard, and ends up taking them out before finishing off Nemesis. Dimitri's POV is based on his survivor guilt and belief that he needs to live for the sake of avenging those who died. He grows out of this thanks to Byleth teaching him he needs to live for the sake of the living and for himself, all while taking the Agarthans out by complete accident while Edelgard's ideals are presented as demonic while Dimitri's beliefs make him a savior. Meanwhile, Edelgard's POV is based on what her father told her despite her knowing he was an Agarthan puppet. She can't be swayed her path as she tries to lie and manipulate those around her, and the world supports the route where Byleth leads the Black Eagles away from her influence (making it so that the Black Eagles are the only class who can get their story-related character development joining any other class). It's either that, or you ignore the world building to walk a path that is based around hadou, which has negative connotations especially when contrasted with oudou, which is what Dimitri's route is supposed to lead to.

You can ignore this growth if you play Hopes, but Hopes is supposed to show how much of an influence Byleth has on their class and is not supposed to replace that experience. Shez can't give Dimitri or Claude the character growth they would have gotten to see the problems with their POV, nor can they stop the Eagles from supporting Edelgard. Shez just seems to go with whatever the lord says, adapting to the route being played, and as such enables each lord's behavior. Not to mention that Shez is hinted to be from Agartha himself, and even then the Agarthan POV doesn't paint them in a positive light.

So, really, what are people saying when they want the Agarthans to be the sympathetic villains rather than the game wanting us to feel sorry for the Nabateans? That they feel the game not doing so is a flaw despite the Agarthans being so racist that they view everyone else as non-human animals and therefore it's okay to experiment on them? That we should support their genocide of the Nabateans because Edelgard said things used to be better despite the reveal that they're the ones who gave mankind Crests while making themselves out to be gods? We should still think that the Church are the bad guys when the Agarthans are the ones behind the experiments, Duscur, the death of Claude's uncle, and so much more? Or that Nemesis was a good king who was demonized by history rather than the power-hungry asshole he's depicted as, the only real misconceptiont here was that he ever was a hero in the first place rather than the tyrannical bandit he actually was.

In the end, it's just people not wanting to let go of their own misconceptions about Fodlan. They don't want to see Fodlan for how it really is. If anything, Houses can serve as a deconstruction of the idea of Death of the Author. It's a game with some very direct messages, but the routes where the player diverges away from those messages (Flower and the entirety of Three Hopes) it leads to bad endings because, at the end of the day, Fodlan was built around those messages. It was built about the need to see people for who they really are rather than who we think they are, as Edelgard being revealed not to be the heroine but rather the villain is the twist of the game who needs to be removed from power. Also that people supporting each other is a far better outcome than everyone being left to fend for themselves, especially when the people at the top use their power to benefit others. But it's up to people to do that themselves, to figure things out for themselves rather than fall into the trap.

Otherwise, we're left with people defending the likes of the Agarthans.

[damoselcastel]

Dame’s thoughts on FE3H Rufus

FE16, aka FE Three Houses, spoilers below

So... over the years since FE3H came out, I’d developed certain headcanons for some off-screen NPCs. Y’know the ones, mentioned by characters, but didn’t get a name let alone a model/portrait. The most conspicuous one might’ve been Dimitri’s Uncle- Regent Rufus.

In the main game he gets mentioned only a handful of times: by Dimitri for existing, by Felix to be criticized for not handling the rampant Bandit situation post-Tragedy, by the plot for kicking off Azure Moon’s civil war events within Faerghus.

So I’d started thinking “what type of prince is this man?” and went with the idea of ‘party prince’: the sort of secondary heir who grew up with few responsibilities and instead just lives the high life on the country’s dime. I figured, this could be a big reason why as a Regent, Rufus would be inept, cause he plain ignored duties thus has no experience ruling. Along this line of thought, I figured even if Rufus wasn’t actively malicious that he did neglect his freshly orphaned nephew (as its canon post Tragedy both Dimitri and Dedue felt isolated within Fhirdiad’s castle).

So I guess, I built up this picture of an uncle who mostly wanted to have a good time and wasn’t very good at the serious stuff in life, one that Dimitri could have a shallow relationship with that was neutral-borderline-negative. Dimitri himself never seems to express anger towards Rufus, and counts him as family in all ending routes with the possibility of counting on his uncle to keep the Blaiddyd line alive in Crimson Flower. I LIVED FOR the drama of Dimitri being falsely set up for the crime of uncle-murder, and all the gross feelings that must’ve accompanied that.

It was kinda fun speculating on a complicated family relationship that was dysfunctional without being outright villainous-- But now I play through FE Warriors 3H, and seems all my headcanons are to be smashed to pieces, lol. More thoughts to come about that on a later reblog.

[airlock]

so, while I believe I’ve made my stance reasonably clear wrt defending edelgard, I also rapidly find myself annoyed by the slice of the Fire Emblem Three Houses fandom which is bent on swinging that pendulum the other way and accrediting her character far below all proper merits. perhaps it’s high time I dedicate that concentrated manic/spiteful energy to another long analytical text post

thus, the topic of today’s blathering on this blog shall be this: the ending of Crimson Flower, the frequent interpretations on the ways it’d secretly suck for everyone, and, without claiming that it wouldn’t suck (because it would), which of these interpretations simply don’t hold up to less motivated scrutinity

-Thesis: Edelgard can’t/won’t actually purge Such Individuals Who Carry A Snakelike Stride To Negotiate Spaces That Are Void Of Light

one of Edelgard’s most notorious points of discussion is her alliance with Fódlan’s baddest, flattest dudes. more charitable readings register it as either a means of playing her enemies against each other, or as a matter she initially has little say over, but can overturn by building up her power base. less charitable readings may register all of Edelgard’s reservations about the alliance as mere theatre -- includingly when she’s not addressing anyone other than them, apparently -- or cast suspicion on the idea that she really did sever her ties with them in the postgame, being that this crucial event is relegated to offscreen and acknowledged only in the epilogue text, which, on all routes, is notoriously difficult to take at face value

the matter with the former is that, just because Edelgard isn’t always honest with her allies, some of the fandom has gotten obssessed with this idea that anything that comes out of her mouth is passible of decanonization, as though one can only ever be 100% honest all the time or a pathological liar. sometimes Hubert also gets hit with some of it, including colorful theories that he’s secretly working with agartha on a deeper level than Edelgard and ultimately intends to usurp her for the ultimate evulz. it’s almost as if one’s not engaging with the same characters at all anymore. but hey, if we must deal in characterization absolutes, let’s go with this: Edelgard and Hubert are both very pragmatic characters -- why, then, produce so much blatantly unecessary theatre? like, there’s an entire paralogue dedicated to Hubert sowing the seeds of a future St. Patrickening; going through so much more trouble than they’re getting worth isn’t how these two operate

the latter issue will give us a little more to chew on, though, because there have been a variety of arguments made to sustain the idea that, despite the epilogue text, Edelgard cannot or will not hunt down the Dudes Who Do The Worm At The Club once the chips are down. a popular one is that Edelgard wouldn’t have enough resources at her disposal to pursue that purge due to having a fucktonne of fresh annexations to deal with; another frequent customer roots itself in archetypal allusions, arguing that, as Edelgard is a blatant second coming of Arvis from Genealogy of the Holy War, her regime should be expected to be headed for the same ignobile end

on the matter of whether Edelgard can wipe out agartha, I’m moved to ask: are the people who push this angle forgetting everything we do see onscreen of agartha? in VM and SS, one month is all it takes between realizing they exist and ending them; in AM, they’re smothered into dust as unintentionally as Dimitri destroys every sewing needle he picks up, largely because Thales somehow figured it was a good idea to stand squarely between the two factions he’d been trying to play against each other.

these guys are jobbers. they’re some of the most weaksauce major villains in the history of Fire Emblem. furthermore, CF concludes with them down several key members and stuck on the endlag of their nukes, which also tipped Hubert off to the location of Shambhala, because I guess it was that important to throw a nuclear tantrum over Cornelia. why would Edelgard be the only one of the three lords who supposedly can’t vamoose these dudes with a sneeze? is it just because she’s the only one who didn’t do it onscreen? and because offscreening it alerts us more readily to what a risible anticlimax the whole thing is, I guess?

as for archetypes -- it’s entirely correct to claim that Edelgard draws heavily from Arvis, and her tentative allies, from the less completely incompetent (but still really poorly written) loptyrous cultists. it’s also correct to claim that the secret spotlight-stealing squad of doom outplayed Arvis and took over his government. still, what sort of logic is this, where an archetypal resonance means everything will play out the exact same way? Perceval is heavily based on Camus and his other imitators, but you can recruit that dude. Jill is heavily based on Minerva and her other imitators, but she can defect back to nation she’d left, if the player is sufficiently incautious. there’s absolutely nothing to obligate Edelgard to follow the same script as her predecessor, least of all to such a point it’d contradict existing canon

(sometimes the ending tapestry also plays into this, because it features a dark bishop behind the crowd, carrying a dagger behind his back. supposedly, he’s threatening the crowd to stay in line. with the dagger that he’s not holding to them. please, rub those last two brain cells together and figure out who that guy is probably trying to kill in that tapestry.)

-Thesis: Dimitri has a secret unidentified heir who’s going to become the new Seliph and make Edelgard his Arvis properly

in a cutscene in ch17, Dimitri tells Rhea that he’s not too worried about getting himself into a straight deathmatch with Edelgard, because even if that ends poorly for him (as it does), there’s another who will carry on the Blaiddyd bloodline in his stead. the fandom has been scrambling for a while now to figure out just who the hell he’s referring to when he says as much

playing off the whole thing with how Edelgard surely must be a carbon copy of Arvis on all aspects, an ascending theory is that Dimitri went and spawned a secret offscreen baby, who will grow up to become Seliph 2.0, and thus, the blade on which Edelgard’s empire ends

the thing is, Dimitri did not spawn a secret offscreen baby. lo, by the combined forces of occam’s razor and conservation of detail, I give you the true identity of the secret remaining Blaidyyd: it’s just Rufus

remember Rufus? Lambert’s brother, was regent when Dimitri wasn’t old enough to be king, wasn’t much of any good at it? you may have written him off because he was murdered in AM, VW, and SS. you know who else was murdered in AM, VW and SS, but not CF? one of Dimitri’s eyes. and that’s not just a crack at Dimitri, either! the reason why he gets to keep both eyes in CF is because the coup d’etat that nearly killed him -- and did fully kill Rufus -- never came to be.

(sidebar -- canon implies that this difference occours because Byleth cast the elusive Summon Conscience spell on Edelgard; I’d say there’s a much more reasonable reading in that, with Rhea alive and relocated to the Kingdom, wiping out the royal family is a lot of trouble just to give her a pretext with which to rule the roost herself. still, see, we can interpret that reasonably without creating another stupid ass Edelgard Totally Lied spot!)

now, I do have to concede that Rufus isn’t explicitly confirmed to be the remaining Blaidyyd that Dimitri was referring to, and it’s also not totally impossible for Seliph 2.0 to be the product of Rufus’s grand royal womanizing. it’s just, at this point, the supposedly clear-cut archetypal resonance is now nothing more than unsubstantiated fanon direly clinging to that last cliff of technically being possible

-Thesis: Almyra will sweep into the wartorn Empire and crush it like a bug

maybe, if they did, we’d finally learn anything canon about them at all-

but see, that throwaway joke is a fantastic starting point. whenever almyra gets brought up in terms of FE16 endings, it seems to be under this unspoken agreement that they’re able, willing, and intent on unleashing a colossal invasion of Fódlan, effective soon enough to take advantage of the depleted and unstable society left in the continent at the game’s end.

why should we start from that assumption, though? it’s not rooted on anything other than the fact that Almyra at one point in the past was all of able, willing and intent on unleashing an invasion of Fódlan that was fierce enough to force international cooperation. what little we’re told of Almyra at the time of the game consistently indicates that this is no longer the case.

in CF alone, Almyra does attack, twice: once as Claude’s reinforcements, and then again when the usual noncomittal border raid meets the new leadership. Edelgard’s forces trounces them both times. note how that’s just Edelgard’s forces, too, and not the continental coalition that was previously required. but that should figure, shouldn’t it? after all, after the Locket was built, Leicester alone kept any new Almyran offensives from getting that serious. and Claude himself points out to Lorenz, in their supports, that Almyran raids dropped a lot in frequency around the time of the game; that may be just pre-timeskip, but all in all, the increasingly clear picture is that, even if Fódlan stirs itself for a bunch of years, Almyra doesn’t seem to be able, willing, and intent on squeezing that opportunity for another major invasion.

sometimes, the centerpin of this theorama is Claude, and specifically, his fate in Deirdriu. supposedly, there’s a catch-22: if he survives, he’s taking his ambitions and schemes back to Almyra in order to come back to Fódlan a few years later with a vengeance, and if he dies, the vengeance will instead come from his grieving parents. now, I know that correctly interpreting Claude’s character isn’t really in vogue yet, but both of those scenarios fundamentally misunderstand him, his development, and his circumstances.

let’s say he survives -- would he be eager to come back with an army behind his back? he might have all of his ambitions, but he’s a guy who rarely holds grudges, loves being alive, and just found out he doesn’t like war very much at all. and let’s say he dies -- sure, his parents aren’t going to like it, but is that all it takes? think back to Claude’s backstory, and to the amount of people who tried to kill him; didn’t these people just finally get what they wanted?

in fact, if Edelgard wants Claude -- and/or his parents -- off her back, accomplishing such is possibly just as simple as entreating with their enemies inside the country. remember, the paralogue where she fights off an Almyran charge also ends with her expressing a desire to reach across the Throat diplomatically, where previous authorities of Fódlan failed to do so because of their strict adherence to xenophobic dogmas. chalk that up to Edelgard’s naïveté or overconfidence all you might want; the long and narrow of it is that the possibility of exploiting inner Almyran politics to Fódlan’s favor is new ground that she breaks by herself.

of course, when it comes down to it, she might not even have to do any such heavy lifting, because it’s just not a given that Claude and/or his parents would be able to enact this vengeance that’s being expected of them, or would even want such a thing. this is, in fact, the breaking point of a lot of other smaller theses about someone who would hypothetically raise the flag of revenge against Edelgard’s regime. y’see...

-Thesis: any number of polities in Fódlan will never accept being violently subjugated by Edelgard

over the course of Edelgard’s march, a bunch of people die, and a bunch of territories get conquered. any number of the families that lose something in the process will then be assumed by fans to be plotting to retaliate against Edelgard for it. this, despite that the exact opposite of it happens over and over again in canon.

and do note, I’m not even just talking about CF. on all of the other routes, you spend a significant amount of the post-timeskip fighting your own country-of-choice’s forces, because a whole bunch of Fódlan folded to Edelgard without a second thought and another whole bunch is just going to stay on the fence unless you demonstrate enough force to draw them to your side.

in the Alliance, about half of all the most influential families side with Edelgard immediately, to the point of being willing to fight the other families over it. furthermore, it seems that Goneril, one of the families that isn’t a part of this pro-imperial bloc, often gets cast as as a focus of post-CF imperial opposition, because they’re very protective of their baby girl who probably died in the war -- nevermind that they don’t seem to be at all uncomfortable with asking for their dutiful new overlords to take care of the Locket while Holst is having another sick/poisoned fit. as it turns out, Hilda can keep her responsibility for choosing to give her life in that battle (against explicit orders, even), and warrior families can get over the fact that war gets people killed sometimes

the Kingdom is the same story; an entire territorial half of it will fold to the Empire on all routes. outside of CF, this requires a little coup, but if none of the western lords ever stood up to Cornelia, what would make them any sort of eager to stand up to Edelgard? hell, AM shows us Annette’s uncle having to give up his own life just so Cornelia doesn’t so much as get the impression that he’s colluding with Dimitri. and then, in CF, there’s no coup, but that same half of the Kingdom flips like a yugioh card as soon as Edelgard gets past Arianrhod, despite that the Kingdom, with the church’s help, is still exhibiting roughly enough military strength to keep pushing the Empire back.

in case you missed it, that’s Edelgard’s whole strategy: she tries to take the fight straight to the people who would never surrender to her -- because once she’s dealt with those, then everyone else surrenders. most of the authority in Fódlan is held by scattered people who put their own individual interests first, and happily base the side of the war that they support only on where they see the best odds of not getting killed, as opposed to any manner of loyalty or loftier value. this aspect of Fódlan gets called out a lot in the game, too

regardless, though, it sounds like there’s a lot of the fandom that’s still constantly projecting a specific type of loyalty onto these people. some sort of devotion to king and country, an appeal to a sovereignity which none of these countries, not even the Empire, probably really have. most of the nobles in Fódlan don’t actually give a flying shit what government they’re currently operating under, and haven’t given one since Adrestia was whole. even the ostensibly tidy three little country arrangement that we’re presented at the onset of the game is actually historically recent.

(fun fact: did you know that, when Leicester first became its own thing, Faerghus was also two separate countries? those two got back together, but Leicester decided not to get back together with them and they made a whole war about it. I feel like that’s a little less than the stark sense of nationality that folks keep projecting on these territories)

so yeah -- there are still lots of fair accusations to make of whether Edelgard’s regime would be a good thing, and whether it would survive. but here’s some that ought to be discarded, at least for those of us who aren’t in the edelhating bubble

[agoddamn]

Someone on Reddit posted that Dimitri had valid criticism for Edelgard’s policies only benefitting the strong and talented, and now Edelstans are bending over backwards to argue how infallible and better her system is and basically vilify anything that doesn’t involve razing the nobility system (which uh, she doesn’t even do so???). I don’t understand how people can accuse others of “not understanding the context of CF” when they blatantly ignore everything about the other 3 routes.

I think to a degree people are really in love with the idea of a meritocracy because it feels most just (get rewarded for being the best! Get what you deserve!), to the point where they don't want to talk about issues inherent with that system.

So, what about the disabled? Traditionally it's the church that made the first overtures for caring for the disabled, and Edelgard has just waged war on hers. And who decides what "merit" is? And what about disadvantaged people who are starting several steps behind? What about farmers who can't afford to stop farming and get educated?

Meritocracies have a distinct habit of either reinforcing existing disparities (under our meritocracy, only white people are succeeding! Gee, this must mean that all black people are stupid!) or, by some crazy coincidence, all the people with the most merit are the people the ruler likes the most.

Which, huh, interesting how all of Edelgard's friends inherit their noble positions that were supposed to be abolished…

I normally wouldn't go into this much detail politically nitpicking a game, but FE16 threw down the gauntlet by having a character insist that her meritocracy would fix EVERYTHING and then reinforcing her position by giving her a happy ending where everything she wants happens with a wave of a magic wand...which unfortunately convinces a lot of people playing the game that obviously she's right, meritocracies fix everything and everyone else was the absolute worst for questioning her! And that's kind of a worrisome political opinion to let run by without saying anything.

Cognitive dissonance is a hell of a drug. People are always biased to some degree towards what they see/hear first; that's why the misinformation campaign last election was so insidious and powerful.

[randomnameless]

Claude’s perspective is important to show you more of the racist side of Fodlan

Anon forgot to add “’s devs” after Fodlan, because given what Nopes ultimately gave us, complete with the “teehee Nader, remember, you cannot plunder Faerghus to bring souvenris back home” with laughs in the background, or the entire “raiding the border for funsies and then we party!!” I’d say that Almyra is a caricature of what someone who grew up in the 1800s thought was “the Orient”, to remain polite.

Claude’s perspective in this aspect is very interesting, because let it be in FE16 or in Nopes, he never (save for his ending in VW) takes time to pause and wonder why Fodlan people - especially the ones from the Alliance - do not really like Almyrans. His theory always starts with “Fodlan is too close minded”, and never reaches the point where Almyra has to stop invading, pillaging and ultimately killing (I’m sure they’re not playing basketball during the raids) Goneril soldiers for fun.

You could almost make a point that Claude hyper focusing on the “racist side of Fodlan” is a way to divert his own attention on Almyra’s mindset and faults ; it takes two to tango, Fodlan doesn’t like foreigners, Almyrans think Fodlanese people are weak/cowards, why should Fodlan be the only one to learn how to dance?

That’s why the VW ending image still manages to work - at least subtly - Almyrans may have come to this diplomatic meeting armed with spears and weapons while the Leicester Knights are cowering in fear, Claude doesn’t allow “free plundering souvenir time!” for Almyra, but stands between the two parties with a treaty, effectively creating a bridge and relationships between the two nations.

Big disagree. Claude's perspective is important to show you more of the racist side of Fodlan and how the Central Church's religion has made people narrow-minded. Dimitri's Azure Moon route touches on some racial issues but not to the degree that Claude's route does and Dimitri isn't affected by Fodlan's racial issues like Claude is due to Dimitri being a born and bred white Fodlan guy whereas Claude actually is Almyran and has to hide his identity because of that. Plus Dimitri's story is rooted more in his own personal redemption. So yes, having a POC lord's perspective is rather nice and refreshing and I'd rather give up Edelgard or Dimitri to keep Claude's POV.

Claude's perspective is important to show you more of the racist side of Fodlan

How does his side show more racism than Dimitri and Duscur's story does? Honestly? People don't even know Claude is half Almyran. He doesn't even tell them.

how the Central Church's religion has made people narrow-minded

Honestly, how does the Central Church make people more narrow-minded? I'm asking honestly. Please show me where in the game the doctrine makes people hate foreigners.

Dimitri's Azure Moon route touches on some racial issues but not to the degree that Claude's route does

I don't really remember too much racism from Claude's route. Other than being told there was racism. But I didn't actively see it happening to Claude. Which is what I care about more.

If someone can prove it to me, I will then agree. But these anon asks never have quotes or screenshots to back up claims.

Dimitri isn't affected by Fodlan's racial issues like Claude is due to Dimitri being a born and bred white Fodlan guy whereas Claude actually is Almyran and has to hide his identity because of that.

It's true he is affected in a different way and the experiences are not the same. But neither GW or VW are really about Claude's issues growing up half Almyran. VW is about learning the truth of Foldan and GW is about destroying the Church.

Plus Dimitri's story is rooted more in his own personal redemption.

Yes, that's true.

So yes, having a POC lord's perspective is rather nice and refreshing and I'd rather give up Edelgard or Dimitri to keep Claude's POV.

I would LOVE a POC lord's perspective but frankly he talks very little in his route about those experiences. You know who suffered more and talked about it more?

Cyril. Who we see people actively talk shit about in the game, and aren't just told he heard bad things.

That may all sound harsh, but the fact of the matter is that they fumbled Claude. Claude could have been super interesting and had potential to be a super unique lord. I would trade Dimitri or Edelgard for the true realization of his potential and what he had to offer to the narrative.

But as he stands, he doesn't really offer anything we can't get from another lord. Which is a damn shame.

[randomnameless]

Why do the FEH devs insist on ignoring Nabatean lore so much?

I recently had a surprisingly cordial discussion on redshit with someone about the "nabateans = colonisers" take, and one of the main points raised was that the game was purposedly foggy around Nabateans/Sothis/their story because it would obviously favor a certain narrative (and thus make another narrative look, uh, not that marketable anymore).

To be honest, we still ended up with a product that had a lead go "this race and its blood* is the reason why the world sucks" and yet that lead is still marketable enough to have raunchy cipher cards and 5 FEH alts, so I actually wonder if, while pissing on that lore had that purpose, it was ultimately pointless since Supreme Leader can still sell goodies despite her incarnation in FE16.

And not only Supreme Leader - but the entirety of WC where we basically have 70% of the cast crying/complaining about their "mixed blood" or lack of and basically adding their 10 cents to the "this race and its blood is the reason why the world sucks".

I mean, can you imagine Sylvain selling any goodies and alts if Flayn replied to his "wah wah people only are kind to me and want to fuck me because I have Nabatean blood :(" by some uncharacteristic "good for you, I have to hide my ears, had to dye my hair, have to lie about my family because if the truth is found out about my identity, I will be hunted and vivisected like an animal and harvested for parts by people who call my kin abominations - just like what happens in the game where the same people who call my kin "abominations" ally with a classmate who calls me a creature and pretends I am incapable of human feelings based on my race".

FE Fodlan's main selling point is its cast of students, for various reasons, but even if I tried to kid myself, Nopes and FEH made it clears : students are the main selling point.

If you spare more time and attention to the Nabatean plot/lore, the students either grow from "likeable" to "despicable" or worse, you won't gaf about them because yeah sure, Hilda might be upset because people expect things from her due to her crust, but it would feel like a "peanut" compared to Seteth's irrational (granted, it's not so irrational since GW exists) fear that Flayn's newest friends would dissect her if they learnt she was a Nabatean, and being conflicted by finally letting her have human friends and form bonds she crave, or protect her due to the trauma from the genocide of their species.

Don't get me wrong, I love peanuts, I mean, not everyone can have a tragik of loaded backstory!

And yet, given how this verse's DNA is "can you fight against the red emperor who uwus about you", they had to add copious amounts of Earl Grey to their games so there's no clear-cut factions :

The "Your alien blood and its influence on the world corrupted it, so I want to reform it under my command" vs "I don't want to die and you oppose me due to my race and side with the people who genocided my kin"

is turned to :

"Your alien blood Crests and its your church's influence on the world corrupted it, so I want to reform it under my command"

"I don't want to die and you oppose me due to my race and side with the people who genocided my kin"

Sprinkle with the cast's hammering here and there that the "reforms" might be needed - but never develop on what they are - and add a few baseless and groundless takes as a toping (basically everything Claude says about tolerance and the general "isolationism/foreign policy" stuff) and you get FE Fodlan where the Red Emperor's war isn't seen as the catastrophe it is in the other entries from the series!

Now, for FEH...

FWIW, the F!F!Billy's trailer had them try to explain that Sothis was a bit pissed about her slaughtered/massacred children when Nopes never gave any reason about why she was pissed - maybe on Billy's behalf bcs Jerry's dead, but come on, she would indeed deserve the medal of the worst parent in the franchise if that was the case, since Billy can murder her daughter without Sothis taking over ! - but given that they cannot write/go against the source game those characters are from.

They tried a bit, with B!Supreme Leader and Hegemongard's FB, but then it stopped (because she had no "new unit" released since then lol) and I can understand why : Hegemongard came out before the Supreme Emblem, and Hegemongard hates dragons who are seen/perceived as gods by some of their human followers. Come FE17, and now Supreme Emblem accepts Alear because they are "one of the good ones". We can come up with HCs and details and talk about what are emblems or if Hegemongard's views were only hers at the end of AM all day long... But imo, Doylist wise, it still feels it's a retcon because the devs from the main games tried to scrap and remove the most "controversial" traits she had.

For the other characters... Well, you see what Marianne is in FEH (but even in her base games), she's one of the few characters who reacts - in a way - to the partial history about relics and demonic beasts and all... only to give sad uwus to Maurice.

FE16 (and Nopes) refused to have any "student" character react to the Nabatean lore/reveal, about what are relics and all. There are no lines, Claude shared some knowledge in the explore section of VW's last chapter, but we don't have anyone muse or think or even talk about what are relics, what are crests, and what kind of fuckery their ancestors or the ancient humans of Fodlan did.

With that in mind, FEH can't do much : either they write Marianne in a retcon-y way like what happened for Hegemongard (and they're not afraid to piss on characterisation, look at Lyon!), or they flanderise her "character" and develop her around 3 lines she had in the game in her paralogue, and continue to give sad uwus about Momo when he was at best a guy who slaughtered and murdered so much that he abused the Nabatean turned into a relic to the point where he turned in a demonic beast even if he had a matching crest, or at worst, had been part of Nemesis's piñata party in Zanado and was something of a genocider.

Tldr :

Why FE Fodlan never gaf about Nabateans : earl grey + the marketable cast has to stay marketable and you can't sell peanuts at the same price you'd sell swordfish

Why FEH dgaf about Nabatean lore : they can't afford to retcon characters + they have to sell peanut alts with the same seasoning they had in their base game.

For what it's worth though, I think FEH is more daring than the base game(s) given how they gave more lines and screentime to Rhea - through her different alts - than GW. And they even designed her Halloween!alt's lines to piss on some of Claude's assertions, while the various FB involving members of the church also - indirectly - reply to some accusations thrown their way in FE16 when, FE16, never gave them an opportunity or lines to explain that those takes were full of dung.

*"but random, maybe she doesn't know that the crests she often decries is "dragon blood"!"

It's highly debatable, especially given what she and Hubert throw to Billy in CF - but even if she doesn't, Doylist wise we still have a character who, knowingly or not, says "this race and its blood* is the reason why the world sucks" and who is never called out on her prejudice. That's more of an issue regarding the general writing though, she has to be a red emperor and took pages from Ashnard's book, and yet, the player must still feel bad and want to romance her, so her mindest/goal cannot be looked at too closely, because, I guess, even the devs thought it would be difficult to romance her (thus sell goodies!) if more light was shed on the "blood from this race corrupts our people" schtick -> which in turn would also make characters whose backstory and gimmick rely on "crying about crests" be way less likeable, thus marketable and able to sell goodies.

[markoftheasphodel]

Sounds like you want support conversations to be either abandoned like in FE11, or SEVERELY limited to the FE15 quantity, because the quantity of partners that FE13 provides leads to self-contradictory/incomprehensible characters that are either unusable or unfun to write in fic.

I think the GBA era did a pretty good job of parceling out the support conversations in terms of quantity and quality; the mechanics for building them in-game and the caps on what could be achieved per playthrough are shit. FE15 didn’t do quite enough with some characters-- I mention the Rise of the Deliverance DLC favorably because the extra coupla conversations did REMARKABLE things for the Deliverance as characters. But in between some manner of base convos (necessary at this point IMO), 4-7 support chains per character, boss battle dialogue, and the various forms of “reaction” chatter that have become standard since FE got voice acting, and cut scenes... that’s plenty.

Let’s look at Diarmuid for a potential FE4 reboot since he’s got so little to go on in FE4 itself.

Reboot!Diarmiud Support Chains in order of necessity:

#1: Nanna

#2: Oifey, as his mentor and using their original event conversation as a base

#3: Ares, since they’re cousins, liege-and-knight, and riding home together unless Diarmuid inherits some shit.

#4: Lester and/or Ulster, as his Tirnanog bros

#5: Seliph, as his present liege and his Tirnanog bro

#6: Leif, as his potential brother-in-law and as foreshadowing for a Thracia 776 remake.

#7: Finn or Lewyn in the event he’s the kid of either one of them

#8: Lachesis in the inevitable “a bunch of Gen 1 characters survived actually!!!” DLC

#9: Predestined love interests, which he didn’t actually have in FE4 so IDEK

You can stop at 4 core support chains, or five if Diarmuid is chatty with both Lester and Ulster, and round him out pretty nicely as a brother, a student, a future knight, and a friend. You can touch on his aspirations, his fears, the legacy he carries, and what makes him the “charming” prince as opposed to the not-very-charming Lester and Ulster. With the addition of all the other now-standard game chatter as described above, Diarmuid exists in multiple dimensions without needing a single forced heterosexual romantic support chain. And anything else is just gravy, including the option for finally hashing things out with a parental unit.

Then let’s take Hannibal, as the precise kind of character who tends to get shafted on supports because he comes in late and no1curr.

Reboot!Hannibal Support Chains in order of necessity:

#1: Coirpre/Charlot, no arguments

#2: Altena, no arguments

#3: Leif, as both Altena’s brother and Hannibal’s future king, not to mention the tie-in to a key scene in Thracia 776

#4: Wildcard. Could be Seliph, but he’s not really as key to Hannibal’s future as the Leonster kiddos. Could be Lene/Laylea. I’d frankly like him to confront Finn over the whole “Well, you finally invaded my country and deposed my lord, so are you satisfied now?” angle. He could also mentor one of the other kiddos in an unexpected way-- Febail, Patty, Tine, Ced? Someone with a Thracian-peninsula angle might work.

#5: ???

Again, four support chains would be GREAT. An FE15 model would likely get us ONE support chain, which would be a shame. FE16, though, was pretty generous in the platonic mentoring that older characters got to do with younger characters, to the point where you could imagine Hannibal getting several conversations that terminate at the B-level. FE16 did some things very right and the platonic support chains are one of them IMO.

[gaslightgatekeepgirlbosscombat]

Group E, Round 2, Poll 5:

Propaganda under the cut

Rei Mekaru

They gaslight because their parents died saaad:( :(. Honestly it’s because their the ultimate professor because of herself. And she doesn’t trust anyone

Lady Rhea

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE GAME AHEAD This lady gaslighted, gatekept, and girlbossed for a little more than 1000 years. Her story starts in ancient Fódlan where she was a member of a magical dragon race called the Nabateans, children of Sothis. After Sothis was killed and her corpse desecrated by a bandit named Nemesis (who believed himself to be fighting for the freedom of humanity), he made a sword out of her body to arm his allies and massacred the Nabateans. Rhea gathered the last few Nabateans left and some human allies and, under the name 'Seiros', waged war on Nemesis and his army. Victorious, Saint Seiros rewrote history to cover up the existence of the Nabateans and created a religion around her mother, now calling Sothis the Progenitor God. As the years go on, Lady Rhea used her holy influence to give rise to the Adrestrian Empire. It's implied that her church, the Church of Seiros, played a part in wars that resulted in the creation of the Holy Kingdom of Faergus, a nation that broke off of Adrestria, and the Leicester Alliance, another nation which broke off of the Kindgom. FE16 makes a point to note that she continues to censor history up to the present, including limiting technological advancements for 'blasphemy'. Her advisor, Seteth, once served her as Saint Cichol and even he has shown shock and horror at how far she has gaslit, gatekept, and girlbossed. The protagonist of this game is the child of Sitri, the 12th human vessel in a project that Lady Rhea personally conducted to try and revive her mother. Rhea never admits this to the protag's face until she is either in a weakened state or an enemy of the protagonist. She even tries to restart the experiment on the protag without their knowledge. The game splits into four routes and in one of them the protagonist turns on Rhea. In this route Lady Rhea girlbosses so hard that she turns into a dragon and reclaims her Saint Seiros persona as she tries to kill the protag and reclaim her mother who, at this point, exists as a weapon the protagonist wields and as an organ Lady Rhea implanted into them as a baby. In two of the routes where the protagonist sides with Lady Rhea she'll accompany them to combat the forces that orriginally allowed Nemesis to attack her peeople (who have turned into a highly advanced underground race at this point). This girlboss moment is so cool to me because Lady Rhea had been a prisoner for 5 years but still manages to turn into a dragon and take a literal ICBM to the face to protect the protag. TL;DR: Lady Rhea has gaslit society and made a fake history. She gatekept by personally executing members of her own church she made because she disagreed with their ways. She girlbosses by being the Archbishop of her religion for 1159 years and turning into a dragon to KILL "

She created a thousand year old church to control an entire continent. She rewrote history to be able to control the continent and keep the power she gained, under a belief that she was all that could protect humans from themselves.

The ULTIMATE example of gaslight gatekeep girlboss!! (((Major FE3H spoilers))): Gaslight: constructs an entire centuries-old religion centered around her dead mom with herself as the leader, hides the identity of herself (secretly the founding saint and namesake of said religion) and her compatriots (secretly other major saints), rewrites continent’s history as well as the origin of the nobility’s hereditary crests and holy relics, hires homeschooled mercenary seemingly for nepotism/skill reasons but doesn’t tell them that she actually implanted her mother’s heart into them as an infant in hopes to revive her dead mom. Gatekeep: intentionally withholds continent’s secret history, church covers up and censors some of humanity’s technological/medical advancements in order to obscure aforementioned history as well as to prevent the development of more efficient weapons of war/destruction, instructs faculty and students not to leak dangerous side effects of powerful holy relics to the wider public, executes rebels/assassins/conspirators that seek to remove her, literally hires a Gatekeeper known only as Gatekeeper. Girlboss: Canonically bisexual pope with hips for days and de facto leader of an entire continent. Powerful warrior. Proficient in instructing hand-to-hand combat. The first cutscene of the game shows her sword-fighting in heels with a muscular man and, after being disarmed, beating the shit out of him in hand-to-hand combat and stabbing him to death with a dagger. Girlboss.

[gascon-en-exil]

Hi! This is Blackacre438 from youtube dusting off a tumblr account I haven't used since 2014. Holy moly. If you're still at all interested in talking about 3 Houses (and it's ok if you aren't), you had mentioned a long while ago that among the supports you most wanted to see in 3H that didn't already exist was Dimitri and Ferdinand. Given you're a Ferdibert shipper and an enjoyer of the Fargheus Polycule, how well do you think Ferdinand would fit into the Homosocial knight culture of Fargheus?

Hey there. I do have a ton of FE16 headcanons and miscellaneous content on here if you search that tag going back to 2019-21, but after that point I did mostly run out of new things to say about the game (and started my YouTube channel, which took away a lot of my attention) so it largely dropped off. These days I don't keep tabs on all that much apart from the never-ending discourse, because there are still somehow prolific trolls in the fandom even now. But even so -

Under more serious readings of his character, Ferdinand would likely take well to Faerghus's homosocial knight culture if he had the chance to get adjusted to it. With that said, I pretty much never go for sedate Ferdinand (or Ferdibert) readings these days because the melodramatic, kinky dark comedy route is vastly more entertaining. I've long entertained the headcanon that, even in an AM AU where Hubert survives because Ferdinand advocated for sparing his life, the two of them would not work well in the polycule. Hubert would be as vindictive and evil as ever, and Ferdinand would almost certainly be more interested in his lover than in fooling around with a bunch of guys who to a man aren't kinky enough for his tastes (Sylvain, maybe, and Yuri if we're counting him...the others, not so much).

I can also easily see Adrestians in general looking down on Faerghus's culture of knighthood, including the distinctly martial flavor of homoeroticism that coexists alongside heterosexual marriage - a take on male sexual relationships present in several real-world premodern cultures. If Ferdinand and Hubert are campy theatre gays in a superficially high-culture Empire, they'd likely consider rather primitive a country where the men are all bound together in eroticized brotherhood and yearning to die in each other's arms on the battlefield. And on the flip side, I don't think the Faerghus boys* would really understand Ferdinand's perspective on things like camp or the gender-as-performance appeal of drag - an interest I infer from some lines in his Manuela supports. It goes without saying that they wouldn't get his certified villainfucker tendencies, either, even if a postgame Hubert would be expected to remain on his best behavior (he absolutely isn't).

To go even sillier however, several of us in this corner of the fandom have the headcanon that Dimitri is mostly a bottom because his Blaiddyd-boosted strength would literally kill most partners who try to take his dick. Ferdinand von "huge hole" Aegir would take that in particular as a challenge.

*Dedue is, as always, the wild card here, because he's not actually from Faerghus. I know I've written in the past about how Dimidue stands out from the other Lions M/M pairings in its dynamic and the presentation of their ending, which sees them cohabitate and apparently never marry anyone else. This not only lends itself to a reading of them adopting children and forming a semi-monogamous family unit, but it also speaks to how Dedue is disruptive (in a good way!) to the pre-Tragedy status quo of the Blue Lions. It gives Dimitri and Dedue's relationship a very different texture from that of Dimilix and Sylvix while also giving it more dramatic layers than Ashedue on account of the bits of Faerghus's knighthood culture that Dedue does pick up on (ref: his Gilbert supports, his resolve to take revenge for Dimitri in VW). And as I ship all four of those pairings in some form or another, more variety is great for allowing them to feel distinct while also coexisting peacefully.

That said, I think Dedue would find Ferdinand's penchant for theatrics bizarre if not actually obnoxious, and he absolutely wouldn't trust anyone so enamored of a man like Hubert.

[adelle-ein]

my fanfic; little light ( T | FE16 | Flayn & Seteth | 14k )

She is beautiful, and she is perfect. It is foolish to say so, because the goddess herself says perfect beings cannot exist - but Cichol knows now she must have been wrong, because his daughter is perfect. Her hair and eyes are green, softly tinted with blue like her mother's eyes, her ears are pointed to indicate the blood of their kind, and she is tiny, and fragile, and perfect. They name her Cethleann. In the old tongue of Nabatea, a language Cichol barely speaks, one only Seiros and the goddess herself are old enough to know well - it means light. "Our little light," Ianthe says, and she is right. That is what she is - tiny, but shining, down to her core. (READ ON AO3)

image sources: x x x x x

[rogue-arcadia]

Three Houses Experience 1

So.... been playing Three Houses as I've been able and to give people an idea of where I am.... I've seen the fog cutscene and am on the "off-day" following it. That should give people enough of an idea.

So.... I can already say, mechanically alone this game is the pinnacle of every Fire Emblem game I've ever played.

How can I say that?

Well first off, the weapon triangle makes about as much sense as.... well.... saying the bigger dude will win in a fight between two dudes. It might turn out that way, but the little guy might have stamina and speed to make up for reach and strength. That being said.... the freedom of the new battle system is quite amazing, so instead of "sword users are the bomb in the early game until you run into lance users specifically placed to make your life more stressful unless you leveled up axe users a bit and then it eventually turns into "lances are really the only other viable weapon than swords or tomes if you're not using one of the three, your doing it wrong." Now in this game it is just weapons help you determine paths you want to take, like "oh, you wanna focus swords, have some swords, become a mymidon and go mercenary or something along those lines" or "go soldier for accuracy and fighter for power" it makes me very happy and I love it! I'm having tons of fun right now with just how these all work! You just pick weapons for what you want to do with a character and that's it, this is going to lead me to do VERY fun runs where I use the worst skills of each student or something along those lines.... it should be amazing.

Now let's move to characterization. It is simply superior to the other FE games I've played. This is partly due to all of the scenes that these characters are in being acted out.... and partly due to superior writing.... and I'd say it is probably that way because it makes sense to write around personalities vs classes... for example aside from a couple supports in Awakening Kellam's whole personality was "no one notices me despite my huge armor" vs Bernadetta being like "I want to not hide in my room all the time and also I really like food, I do embroidery too and think the Imperial Princess has no fears" oh and "I wish I had more friends and that people were more like plants." This is just my supports with Bernadetta so far that are fairly inconsequential, I'm leaving out a detail on purpose, and that is the WHY she is the way that she is. And overall.... it feels good. Very good actually. I feel a connection with Bernadetta because I am taking in who she is and why, I am absorbing her naturally, as I would any other person in real life and she feels like a couple people I've known, if not a little exaggerated. That being said... there is one other detail I like. These conversations last as long as they need to, if there would be a shoehorned in third conversation in FE13/14 it doesn't exist in FE16. There are people with only B-level supports and it just makes me happy to see that. Like holy crap! That's some detail, sometimes you just have good friends who you do stuff with and that's it, no need to be closer because neither of you cares all that much or is just comfy with that particular level and nothing else happens to make you two closer.... AH! Just so much nice going on there.

And the maps.... objectives seem pretty same-y but the maps feel different, distinctly different, the fog map had the fog gimmick in addition to a gimmick I won't mention but enhances the map... and I was also racing the Allies to get rid of the enemy faster than they could so I would get as much exp as possible from that map. This being said, the whole map felt good, I had to figure out my positioning and why and I just was pleased with how playing it felt despite the usual "Rout the enemy" objective.... I didn't mind it all that much.

Overall, great game, I'd say it is aiming for my heart, I'll see how I feel in the coming parts.

Laters!~

[tk-duveraun]

Just Kidding

FE16/FE3H, Felix/Sylvain, Azure Moon/BL Spoilers, Rated T

---

The problem with Felix was- Okay, one of the problems with Felix was- Hey, I’m getting to a point here, stop interrupting. One of the many problems with Felix was that he was equally the funniest person Sylvain knew and the person thought of as the least funny person in existence. 

He very clearly remembers telling Byleth, with gestures, so she’d believe him, that, “Felix handed me a ladder... And then told me to get off his back.”

Byleth had tilted her head - it was eight months into the school year and she’d gotten better at showing her emotions - and said, as deadpan as Felix had been for joke, “He must have seen you trying to get something off a tall shelf.”

The bottom line was, no one believed Sylvain when he told them Felix was making fun of him.

“I won’t say you have a persecution complex,” Ingrid said, “though you do, but Felix is completely serious. That’s his thing. Glenn was a sarcastic jerk with a heart of gold. Felix is just, well, bluntly rude.”

Sylvain protested and tried, again, to explain that Felix was actually quite good with Black Magic and the electric shock that made his red hair stand on end had been completely intentional, but she wasn’t having any of it. When Ingrid stalked off in disgust, he was frustrated enough that he didn’t even go into town to flirt with pretty girls. He sulked in his room, a book on Black Magic propped up on his lap. The only thing for it was retaliation, even if he struggled to think of how he could use his talents with fire for a harmless prank. Maybe a haircut? He fell asleep with the conversation and plots still swirling around in his head. 

No one ever compared him to Miklan, his sleep-muddled brain muttered between dreams. Yeah, he was older than the others and Miklan older still, so they didn’t know Miklan the way they knew Glenn. And Miklan was unashamedly awful, even before he was disowned. Generally, it was bad form to compare a guy to someone who’d dumped him in a well and left him for dead.

There was something about the well incident that made it easy to talk about. If he was opening up about his family, which, okay, was a rare occurrence, the well was his go-to. It had been terrible. He was still claustrophobic on bad days. Still choked every time he drank well water. (Thankfully Garreg Mach had plenty of milk and juice for the students.) 

Sylvain would have thought it’d be easier to talk about other things. Like the thing he never talked about. The thing no one else knew. It was hard to form the words, even in the silence and privacy of his mind. When Miklan had caught him sneaking his laundry to the washing room before the sun was even up. When Miklan had looked between his red face and balled up sheets and smirked. When he’d said, “Congratulations, little brat. You’re officially as useful as you will ever be.”

It was just a few words and the goddess certainly knew that everyone called him useless at least once a week, but for some reason the event shied away from his waking mind and hid behind damp well-walls.

“You know, Felix,” he said the next day. It was late afternoon and he was in the training hall for one reason and one reason alone and it wasn’t training. No, the training was a terrible downside to his attempt at subtlety. “Hey, that doesn’t count as a point, I was talking.”

“Maybe you should shut up.”

Sylvain crossed his lance with Felix’s sword twice more before he got back to his point. “You know, Felix. You’re not like anyone else. No one in the world could possibly compare to your boring disinterest toward and for girls. It’s almost impressive, really.”

There, he’d done it. “People shouldn’t compare you to your brother” in words that wouldn’t bring up his defensive hackles.

“You’re an idiot,” Felix replied, but there was something in his sword swings. A thoughtfulness that did nothing to make them easier to parry. Not that parrying a sword with a lance was a particularly sound strategy to begin with, but the point of his trip to the training grounds had nothing to do with training, remember?

When Sylvain later fell dramatically to the ground in feigned, completely feigned, exhaustion, Felix stood over him.

“That’s why I do it.”

Okay, that was another problem with Felix. He would continue conversations he had in his head aloud and simply expect the other person to keep up and figure out the context. And if they didn’t, and Sylvain never did, he huffed, scoffed and walked off.

Sylvain spun his lance in his hands, still on the ground, and tried to make sense of the latest non-sequitur. 

Three days later, waking up from a nightmare of clutching soft linens and wishing to melt into old, stone tiles, he woke with a gasp. It hadn’t been his own fault this time, not understanding Felix’s comment. Felix had, for once, given him too much credit. Felix had imagined Sylvain grumbling at muttering at him that ‘No one ever believes me when I tell them you’re funny.’

Felix messed with him precisely because no one would believe it. Jerk.

---

Five years was a long time to wait for any follow up. Not that Sylvain had expected any. There wasn’t much to joke about. There might have been an upturn when Dimitri pulled his head out of his ass, but it had come at the cost of Felix’s father. Felix loved him, Sylvain knew. Hating their parents was a privilege Sylvain carried alone, no matter how many suitors Count Galatea threw Ingrid’s way. Felix’s love for his father was obvious in how angry he made him, in how badly, deeply Felix wanted an apology for a single, careless comment nine years old.

Sylvain stood at Felix’s right shoulder over the best grave they could give the late duke and heard the quiet, “I forgive you.”

Was this another event no one would ever believe? Another set up? No. Sylvain knew it wasn’t and didn’t question his certainty. It couldn’t be a set up because Sylvain would never tell another soul about the private moment he was allowed to witness. Until he heard the whispered words, he might have doubted that he carried Felix’s complete trust, but there was no mistaking it behind the highly inadequate grave.

So Sylvain did the only thing he could. He said the words Rodrigue should have said so many years ago. “He didn’t deserve to die like that. There should have been another way.”

Felix reached over his shoulder for his hand and when he had it, he squeezed Sylvain’s fingers so tightly that his knuckles popped.

---

In the camp outside Enbarr, outside the final battle, Sylvain hoped, they sat together with their fingers touching through layers of leather and metal. A thick, tense atmosphere lingered throughout the entire camp, but to Sylvain it felt like they sat in a pocket of a different, shakier, more anxious fog. Maybe it was the tremble in his heart, the way it screamed and clawed at his ribs for him to grab Felix and kiss him now while they still had the chance.

He didn’t start at the sudden turn of his thoughts. After all, it wasn’t really sudden when he’d been circling around the feelings for years. It was just like him and his useless brain and heart to realize how he felt on what was potentially their last day alive.

(It didn’t occur to him that most of the war had been potentially their last day alive, but if it had, he would have discarded the thought because he was a romantic at heart.)

Then Felix did the thing. The particular tilt of his head, the exact softness of emotion around his eyes, the pull at the corner of his mouth as if he wanted to smile, but chose not to because he liked to make himself suffer needlessly.

It wasn’t the time for jokes. Or maybe it was the best, the only time for jokes. Sylvain picked up his hand and put it fully on top of Felix’s. He braced himself.

“I don’t know how to make the others believe it.”

Okay, it was the other thing. The thing where Felix was having a conversation with the Sylvain in his head, who was always more clever than the one holding his hand and maybe he should take it as a compliment, but he was mostly focused on the knots his stomach had turned into. 

“Believe what?” He finally asked because his heart wouldn’t give enough energy to his brain to figure it out.

Felix turned his head, looked him in the eye and the rest of the conversation, the one line he had said to the Sylvain in his mind struck the Sylvain holding his hand.

He thought the words at the same time Felix said them.

“I love you.” Sylvain didn’t, however, think the derisive “Obviously” that Felix tacked onto the end.

Didn’t really think at all.

He just leaned in and kissed him.