#futuresoon talks about fire emblem

[futuresoon]

Opinions on FE games you've played?

awakening and fates: flawed, don’t like some of the Anime Tropes, baby realm is dumb as hell, i have cumulatively played them for over 300 hours

echoes: played it once. pretty good

heroes: played it with pretty high dedication for like, two years, then suddenly realized i didn’t really care and stopped

three houses: another 300+hour but like, actually good this time, dimitri my love

[futuresoon]

honestly the best hubert/ferdinand has ferdinand as just, absolute villainsexual. someone says “he literally always sounds like he’s plotting the demise of whoever he’s speaking to” and ferdinand’s like “i know right???”. one time hubert wears a color other than black and ferdinand takes it as a personal offense. hubert laughs maniacally before slaughtering an enemy soldier and ferdinand’s just

[futuresoon]

any three houses pairing you like with 94 + 56 please :D

Hair Brushing/Braiding + Awful First Meeting

seeing as we already know how dimitri and byleth met and it wasn’t that bad (well. for them. i think there were people who died and those folks didn’t have a great time), i’m gonna go with...

claude/hilda! is there a canonical way they first met? i don’t know! if i did know i’ve forgotten! so for the purposes of this i shall say that they meet at fodlan’s locket. claude’s granddad is escorting him out of almyra, and the gonerils are of course on good terms with the old guy, but the anti-almyra sentiment runs deep in that part of fodlan and there are Tensions over the idea of a half-almyran dude none of them have met suddenly being the heir to the alliance.

so everyone’s glaring daggers at him, and claude’s trying very hard to be personable and disarming, but he hasn’t mastered it yet. and oh no, the beloved youngest goneril wanted to meet the new kid herself, but she trips and falls! her clothes get all muddy and her hair’s caught in a bush! for about two seconds tensions are Very High because they all know she’s very particular about her looks and what if she blames claude? her older brother, who is not the most sensible when it comes to his sister, might see that as a reason to deny claude entrance through goneril territory!

then claude’s like “oh no, how terrible! here, let me help you. these clothes are so beautiful, it’s a shame they got ruined. but even with mud on them, i can tell how high-quality they are. did you choose your outfit yourself? it matches the accessories perfectly, and even your hair is clearly styled to complement it.”

and hilda’s like “...i know exactly what you’re doing but do go on, tell me more about how pretty my fashion is.”

and he does go on, and eventually offers to help fix her hair, because he always used to help his mother with her hair and he likes to think he’s gotten good at it. he has gotten good at it. by the time he and hilda are talking about which hair pin would look best with the new style they are already best friends. the alliance is saved.

[futuresoon]

listen. listen. dimitri fire emblem is only 18 before the time skip and spends the next five years being uh let’s call it unsociable and there are no indications that he had any even remotely positive interactions during that period. even beforehand he’s polite and friendly but a little distant and clearly already dealing with some issues. he doesn’t reach out to anyone until near the end of the game and his supports tend towards achieving emotional intimacy. what i’m saying is that dimitri is a virgin who cries after sex and no i will not be taking questions at this time

[futuresoon]

so given how big edelgard was on separation of church and state, how much do you think she rolls in her grave when the new king of a unified fodlan just fucking. marries the new archbishop

“I STARTED A WAR TO PREVENT THIS” she screams in the afterlife as church and state gaze adoringly into each other’s eyes and start picking out names for their kids

[futuresoon]

currently asserting my feh dominance by rolling a summer byleth on my free summon

[futuresoon]

when i first saw that akechi’s voice actor also voices hubert i was like “oh wow i can’t imagine that at all” but now i’ve started P5R’s third semester and yup there it is

[futuresoon]

anyway i have now finished all four routes of three houses and here is my Series of Bulleted Lists, in the order in which i played them:

golden deer:

lots of lore

when timeskip claude crits he backflips on top of his wyvern while firing a bow which is pretty much the most extra fight animation possible

final boss isn’t really explained or foreshadowed but the cut scene that happens when you kill him is so fucking baller i don’t actually care

dimitri is killed by random soldiers offscreen, which is totally emotionally satisfying and a logical end to a major character

why is claude leaving me to rule fodlan by myself. claude i have no political experience. claude i am a 20-ish-year-old mercenary who was raised to not know fucking shit about anything, please come back

blue lions:

you want lore? you want to know literally anything about the forces you’re fighting? Fuck You

highest number of pretty boys

which unfortunately leads to lowest number of girls

you know that monthly girl’s nozaki-kun gif where they’re tearfully screaming “tomoda”? that but dimitri

doesn’t let me have tea with dimitri while he’s a feral monster barely capable of human interaction that does not involve violence, unfair

edelgard having a final form kinda comes out of nowhere

when dimitri called me “my beloved” i perished on the spot

crimson flower:

why is it so much shorter, i want more time with edelgard and hubert where i don’t have to murder them

i could joke about how no one in this house is straight but also it actually does have the highest number of canonically queer characters so that’s cool

but i mean, no one in this house is straight

i was weirdly uncomfortable a lot of the time? like maybe it’s because i did two other routes first but the scenes where uplifting music plays and we act like scrappy underdog heroes have a very awkward undercurrent because we are, technically, the evil empire, and fighting the kingdom and the alliance didn’t feel like i was fighting injustice, it felt like i was killing my friends

edelgard referred to my ring as a “gift”, what the fuck, i didn’t crawl over the corpses of my friends just so i could be “live-in partners” with the evil emperor

silver snow:

this is the only route where i used seteth and he is a fucking beast

the final map took me over two hours

i am not particularly certain that a country being ruled solely by the leaders of its predominant religion is, like, a good guy thing, actually

having a vision of dimitri after his death where he sounded really sad and tried to tell me something but couldn’t caused me physical pain

oh look it’s lore again

nice of rhea to tell me that she killed eleven children after i’d already selected her to be my s-support

am i my own mother? but i am also marrying my grandmother, sort of? it’s mothers all the way down

did rhea give me a ring with a green stone because green is the Dragon Color, For Dragons, Bro We Are Dragons

in conclusion i spent over 200 hours on this fucking game and i swear to fucking god intsys the final DLC better be an “everybody lives” route because my heart can’t take it

[futuresoon]

christmas eve was good and so was most of christmas day but then i got randomly nauseated and headachey and tired and had to spend the night at my parents’ house, which wasn’t great, but i also had a lot of orbs to burn and a legendary banner to spend them on and the universe decided to grant me not one but two extra dimitris so it wasn’t all that bad really

[futuresoon]

slothydaydreamer replied to your post: honestly the best hubert/ferdinand has ferdinand...

I don’t know who either of these people are but I still nod wisely because it sounds right

hubert looks and sounds like a disney villain, ferdinand looks and sounds like a disney prince, at first they can’t stand each other but the end of their support is literally the only time in the entire game hubert blushes, the algorithm that determines which characters get paired together for the “what happened with them afterwards” end cards in the credits seems to prioritize them with each other, intsys answer my fucking calls

[futuresoon]

chidorinnnnn replied to your post: slothydaydreamer replied to your post: ...

i do remember hubert being described in a post as “a disney villain with actual political skill” so… if the shoe fits…

hubert is literally every evil vizier except he’s actually fanatically loyal to his liege and has no interest in ruling, he knows he has a natural talent for looking like he just did the final flourish to a villain song so he deliberately cultivates it, he’s the only ride-or-die who actually does always die when you’re not with his liege because he refuses to live in a world without her, and he’s a massive fucking tsundere who says receiving a gift from ferdinand without giving one in return is repulsive to him but by sheer coincidence he happens to have some of ferdinand’s favorite tea on hand, i’d like to call him an extremely good boy but uh that is in fact the exact opposite of what he is and that’s why i love him

[futuresoon]

callout post for the second map in cindered shadows, three waves of reinforcements is a bit much for the second map

yuri’s cute though

[futuresoon]

i’m deeply disappointed this is in hilda’s support, not byleth’s, but still, claude, darling, is there something you want to tell me

[futuresoon]

come on, intsys, you still won’t let me be the one doing the proposing? you made such a big damn deal about my dead dad giving me his ring and telling me to give it to someone i love and it’s still the guy who does it? maybe if i’d picked dorothea instead. she was nice. i bet she wouldn’t have given me a ring and told me she loved me and then been like “anyway bye have fun ruling a country with no political experience i gotta go”

so, fire emblem: three houses! it’s great! i spent 92 hours on my first playthrough! the story’s good, the characters are fun and interesting, the mechanics are solid, free days got kinda repetitive towards the end but by that point everyone’s skills and supports were high enough that skipping didn’t have much consequence, and the near-total lack of Anime Bullshit makes it a solid recommendation even for people who have never played any fire emblem before. i will say that i didn’t have as much emotional engagement in it as i did with fates, but then, most of the deaths were characters who got very little screentime in this route, so maybe if i’d played blue lions or black eagles before this i would’ve been more traumatized.

i wonder if there’s some kind of tradeoff there? a story that’s extremely messy but also highly emotional vs a story that’s mostly coherent but a bit dry. the latter is easier to recommend, at least.

anyway, i wouldn’t have put 92 goddamn hours into this thing if i hadn’t really enjoyed it, and i definitely wouldn’t be planning to put another fucking 200+. blue lions next! my first boyfriend was stable, calm, and had an unambiguously positive goal; i hear dimitri is...not that?

[futuresoon]

slothydaydreamer replied to your post: how have people already finished one route or more...

‘how many hours did you spend on FE14 though?’ Wow, uh….I feel that tag. (The many “reasons“ I didn’t buy three houses yet…I can count them in hours….)

in fairness, three houses is thus far a significantly better-written game than fates not that that’s super difficult and i would feel less shame over spending 300 hours on it than i do for the 200-something hours’ worth of multiple playthroughs i have for fates. so if you’re going to give up your life to something, at least it’s good? that’s what i’m very fervently telling myself.

[futuresoon]

qserasera replied to your post “anyway i have now finished all four routes of three houses and here is...”

'claude i am a 20-ish-year-old mercenary who was raised to not know fucking shit about anything, please come back' excuse me im cackling abotu this

i barely knew about the church of seiros, how did that even happen, i’m sure jeralt was in some respects a decent dad and definitely loved me but he was not intending on raising someone to be put in charge of all of fodlan. claude you are an actual diplomat who is good at talking to people and planning things besides war tactics, you are much better suited than me, i know you have goals that require you to spend a lot of time in almyra but please come back