#fire emblem critical

[triaelf9]

WIVES WIVES WIVES

[raxistaicho]

An ill-fitting throne, like an ill-fitting crown

When I was last playing Three Houses, I was struck again by how small Byleth looks, seated on Sothis's throne:

They just look so fantastically unfitting for the throne.

Female Byleth can't even touch her heels to the ground, and while male Byleth can do that much, the arm rests are too far apart for him to use them properly, and he visibly has to sit so far forward that he can't rest his back against the back of the throne, either.

A pretty common theory is that Sothis was huge when she was alive, and aside from just the sheer size of the throne this is supported by, of all the grotesque things, the Sword of the Creator itself:

It's pretty easy to infer that the serrated portion of the blade was crafted from Sothis's spine. A person's spine generally constitutes 25% of their total height, and the Sword of the Creator is huge, especially compared to Female Byleth:

With Byleth being 5'4'', Sothis could easily be between seven and eight feet tall. She'd easily dwarf everyone else in the game, including Dedue and Nemesis.

Where am I going with this?

Byleth not being big enough to sit properly upon Sothis's throne is symbolic in a way: they're being pressed into a position that doesn't suit them. Just look at how uncomfortable and uncertain they seem, particularly female Byleth.

[carcosa-commune]

im having uncontroversial opinions lately

[curse-d-owl]

Edelgard:

Also Edelgard:

Dimitri:

Edit: for the people that have worse reading comprehension than a 4th grader and mock me over mistakes i never made allow me to spell it out for you.

Edelgard's claim that she only wages war to rid Fodlan of the central church and that she means Dimitri and Faerghus no harm are both lies cause she fully intended to conquer all of Fodlan for Adrestia and fully intended to kill Dimitri in Chapter 8 of Scarlet Blaze to the point where Ingrid had to sacrifice his life to protect Dimitri.

She's violent and dishonest and Dimitri has every reason to distrust her.

[mirensiart]

Found this video from my fire emblem engage run with the best critical skill activation moment ever lol

Basically, if you choose Diamant to kill corrupted Morion (his dad) he has this super sad dialogue with him

And like, I was all teared eyed and sad at it, but then my Diamant activated a critical hit AND used the critical hit line that references his dad and like LMAO

TRUST ME DIAMANT HE IS WATCHING !!

imagine killing your dad and then immediately saying "you put up a good fight" jdbdkdbdkbdkdnd God this video is so funny

[wild-moss-art]

This barbie is going to kill every last one of them!

[moonlightphos]

Hey guys! I'm doing a sale on everything in my store for the next few weeks. No code needed, it's automatic, and as usual free shipping in Australia. Everything that isn't marked as "pre-order", I have in stock and will be shipped within a few days!

(I have tagged most of the fandoms I've made things for, please have a look through my catalogue!)

And my vgen is up and running!

My co-daughter Siobahn (cat, as pictured) had some expensive medical bills recently and the debt needs to be paid off.

[emblemxeno]

Rant ahead.

Honestly part of my confusion at people trashing on Engage's designs for either being too out there or crazy is that this is the same fandom that venerates Pantsless Marth, Dong Armor Alm, Pegasus Knights with short skirts and thigh highs, mages who don't have armor or practical clothes most of the time, the very existence of the dancer class, etc.

These things are classic and funny to poke at, but they were also things that happened 30+ years ago. Do you not think that Marth going commando and Jagen having eye gouging shoulder spikes in 1990 wasn't just as ridiculous, gaudy and impractical as Hortensia's cupcake circus dress in 2023? In Engage's immediate predecessor you had classes with tit separaters, characters with drill hair, Dorothea in opera garb during war time, Hilda's timeskip fit which looks like a prototype Hortensia fit, Petra's timeskip fit, Kronya's existence, and Female Byleth in general.

Impracticality and overdesign is the weakest criticism you can give FE designs. I get it, we long for the GBA era, but let's be real: those designs were made to complement class design in part to compensate for having character mugs and game sprites as the only constant presentation of the characters. "Crazy" designs and high fantasy armor and clothes started with the more decadent characters in the Tellius games because they had models and didn't have to strictly adhere to class design elements anymore.

[curse-d-owl]

The common opinion that Edelgard takes the fastest path to reforming Fodlan while Dimitri goes at a snails pace cause he's risk averse. That is an incorrect statement that's born out of bias and willful ignorance.

The exact opposite is true. Before he was even crowned as the next king he immediately risked civil wars for the sake of Duscur and exposing the crimes of Rufus even when Gilbert protested against that.

In the 2 years he was king he kicked Kleiman out of Duscur, helped the natives ( who previously had no aid in any form ) reclaim their home and fought hard to mend the relationship between Duscur and Faerghus.

He also allowed social mobility to be in Faerghus by allowing commoners to achieve the ranks of knights and nobles should they have the skill for these positions.

And lastly he wants to move away from the dependance on crests and allow Faerghus to be governed by merit.

And none of this gets hindered by Rhea and infact she supports Dimitri in his efforts. In the 2 years she was still in control of garreg mach she has not hindered Dimitri.

They both right the wrongs of Fodlan by getting rid of nationalism, nepotism, forced obligations for those that don't want to and a crest based society. They achieve all but one of Edelgard's goals which is conquering Fodlan for herself and Adrestia.

Meanwhile Edelgard in the 2 years she's been an emperor has done absolutely nothing to mend the relationship between Brigid and Adrestia nor undo the imperialism that Brigid suffers from. The most she did was promise that she'll put an end of the vassalage after Petra officially becomes queen. They're the ones scared of righting their wrongs cause they're afraid of risks. And the only problem that Fodland faces is Edelgard's unjustified war and desire for conquest.

And quite frankly it's bizarre that the author's even put this decision in when this is the same story that has Leicester immediately became bossom buddies with Almyra cause their renowned generals had a good drink.

One last thing i want to talk about is the extreme differences between the oppression of Duscur and Brigid.

Brigid was forced into vassalage and had their crown princess kidnapped into enemy territory as a hostage. Which is extremely horrifying do not get me wrong.

Duscur on the other hand suffered from an unjust genocide, forced expulsion from their homeland, got their land colonized and received no aid from anyone.

Dimitri has more things to set right than Edelgard and he did all of it while Edelgard hardly did anything for Brigid.

[monstierider]

Please tell me I'm not the only one who feels like Crimson flower did a terrible job of making Edelgard....not a villain

Like, I feel like IS sort of couldn't find a good way to justify siding with Edelgard to the player beyond liking her as a character and the only way the could sort of doing it was by reducing Rhea to near Duma levels of insane, but even then while I won't condone her actions I can understand why she lost it, from her perspective she just saw someone she allowed into her home, break into the burial site of her dead siblings with the intention of desecrating them and robbing their graves and then watched what is, from her sad, broken perspective, her own mother choose to side with the person trying to take all she has left of her family away from her, I too would lose it under those circumstances. And then there's Edelgard not even being very smart, like, does she really believe her troops would hear "the church has nukes" and not either, question why they only dropped the one on the one location and why only now or just....lose all morale??? And then there's the battle at the Tailtean plains and the good old conversation between Dimitri and Edelgard, "must you continue to conquer?continue to kill?!" "Must you continue to re-conquer? Continue to kill in retaliation?" Like.....it's like even she realises she has no moral high ground over him and is just trying some desperate redirection to not be the villain she knows she is. And also the entire "king of delusion" scene where Dimitri, in his final moments, swears to avenge everyone who died for her, who she killed, to avenge all his fallen friends and family who died because of her and her ambitions and she basically just calls him a nut job.

Like??? Did IS just....give up on trying to make Edelgard look good and just hope that off her fucking rocker Rhea and Edelgards tragic backstory would cover that up???

[hulloitsdani]

List 5 things that make you happy, then put this in the askbox for the last 10 people who reblogged something from you! get to know your mutuals and followers (ू•‧̫•ू⑅)♡

I took this as an excuse to draw five funny little guys that have taken over my brain, but what I ended up with is a funny sliding gradient for the types of characters I like.

[taihua]

Rapidly losing my good faith towards Veilguard as I get deeper into the story and the characters are still so lacking in depth. 15 hours of gameplay and the most interesting character development comes from Lucanis having a demon in him and admitting that people he killed may or may not be innocent depending on who you ask, and yet there is no tangible story impact outside of party banter :/

I guess Solas is also carrying the brunt of the interesting character development with the side quests about his past and Felassan challenging him on whether he’s becoming too extreme—but it is driving me insane that there are two elven companions in the main party who have absolutely nothing to say about the villains of the game being elven gods. Bellara jokes about it and then proceeds to have absolutely no strong feelings about it whatsoever despite her entire life being devoted to studying elven relics and history??? There’s no way around it, that’s just monstrously shitty writing.

Tevinter sucks so bad that I don’t even think I can talk about it. My biggest question is just “where the fuck are the magisters in all this?” I’m supposed to believe that the only capable people in the entire capital city of Thedas’ most powerful nation are a bunch of sewer dwelling freedom fighters who fight the nonexistent slavery problem? Also Neve is completely flat as a character and her backstory barely makes sense. She’s apparently Hardened in my playthrough because I assumed Tevinter could handle its own problems. This has zero discernible effect on her personality, which has gone from “nice” to “nice but with red graphics.”

I’m still having fun with the gameplay and I like the level designs and combat, but the more I play the more sad I feel about how much of previous DA lore I miss. The city elves and Dalish are indistinguishable. There are no Circle Mages or apostates anymore, no Chantry or Templars. No nobles versus commoners. Just these interchangeable bland factions where the representatives’ personality is “nice.”

Lucanis might be my only exception but even then he’s mostly interesting by what can be extracted from his backstory, not by what is shown in the game :/

[valkyray]

[wild-moss-art]

On her way to solmchella ☀️

[stormsbourne]

The most baffling thing about the Kotaku article, besides spewing out typical Edelstan talking points, is how it thinks Claude wants the "status quo" and has an "us vs them" mindset. I'm sorry, but what?! Have they actually played the game?

it doesn't make any sense for dimitri either, who says time and again that he finds the current system abhorrent and wants to cultivate an era where the strong aren't able to easily prey on the weak who can't defend themselves. the entire point of fe3h is that it's four different takes on what needs fixing in a fucked up world. some of the takes are wrong and some are ill-informed, but every "lead character" of each route (edelgard, claude, dimitri, and rhea) have a different view on what fodlan really needs to become a better place.

and in regards to saying edelgard is the only right one, or even the most right one, I think it's just a western thing to view conquest as inherently productive and I think it's an instinct we should interrogate! not to mention that fire emblem is traditionally about either recovering conquered land or defending your home, eventually taking the fight to the invaders but only because you got invaded first. so crimson flower is trying to tell us something by nature of it being a route where you are doing conquest. you are on the side of the initiator. all of the lords in 3h pull from very distinct archetypes (dimitri is a combination of a classic lord and the swordsman/nobleman with a dark past, your ravens and such; claude is a combination of the wyvern riding noble/prince -- often villainous -- and the wandering/itinerant prince like lewyn or joshua). edelgard pulls from the red emperor, an exclusively villainous archetype very, very strongly and has little else to her.

all of this is also without getting into that japanese game writers are just going to have a very different outlook on this shit than online western leftists in their 20s. I find it happens with a lot of non-american media specifically, where people have a hard time understanding, say, japan's relationship with the aesthetics of christianity or catholicism, because they've got the american viewpoint on those religions and what they mean embedded so deeply that it doesn't occur to them.

anyway I don't know how anyone playing through cf watches dedue Do That on tailtean plains while a dour war march plays, and thinks to themselves, yeah, I'm the good guy here

[emblemxeno]

a long time mutual of mine called edel a communist icon and i felt my whole being recoil........ its so hard sometimes because i dont interact with 3h or 3h fandom since im active for a different fe game but a lot of my fe acquaintances reveal they have positive feelings about her in a "shes right" kind of way and i hate that it automatically makes me lose respect for them. i hate that i even have to even think about this 3h discourse but it bugs me /so much/ how shes still viewed like that, 5 years and many extreme world events later. also thank you for your posts you make me feel sane again.

You're welcome and thank you for the kind words

What's crazy about giving Edelgard the communist label is that she misses many important marks of communist theory pretty handily: allocating resources to everyone according to their needs and ability, complete absence of private property or social statuses, eventually eliminating money and the nation-state.

She doesn't believe in allocation of resources based on needs and ability, she only believes in "people who work hard enough and correctly according to the emperor will get more"; she gets closest in her support with Linhardt but ultimately misses the swing by a mile because if she were an actual communist, she wouldn't have to twist her brain into a pretzel to accomodate someone who'd rather not work, and that's including a friend of hers.

She doesn't believe in the absence of private property or social status, because there are still high status, private property owners under her rule in CF. No, the only problem she has with status and property in Fodlan is the current method of attaining them, which is mostly hereditary and blood based. She has no issue of there being higher classes and privatized property so long as they prove to her and future emperors that they "worked for it."

There's never an indication that she wants money to eventually be done away with.

And desiring collapse of the nation state? The one with the map select line "for the Empire" and the goal of forced militarized unification of those who she deems are opponents who disagree with her aims? Yeah, that ain't her lmao.

Hell, take an example from Xenoblade 3, where the entire game is about rejecting wealth established leadership that profits off of militarization, and Noah, in response to Alexandria asking if her and Colony Iota (themselves a blend of merit/harworking allocation and utilitarianism) will be "useful" he says, "It doesn't matter. I don't see people that way."

People don't have to be useful, have merit, or anything similar to be deserving of basic rights, decency, security and comfort. Everyone deserves the baseline and the ability to get ahead, not rejected the opportunity nor have a lowered ceiling of accomplishment due to a single individual's (i.e. an Emperor's) perception of their failings.

Hell, Edelgard and Hubert's 'Likes' include "Talented individuals" and "Useful people" respectively. They like preaching that only they know what's best and what's worth it in the end, centralizing knowledge and power to their positions and letting people they deem worthy to have higher capabilities.

Pretty anti-communist to me idk