#gets assassinated by a friend

[vaguely-concerned]

I adore it whenever rook rests their hands on their hips like a handyman or mechanic about to deliver some bad news as to how much the repairs are going to come in at. the hero equivalent of a plumber. they're out there saving the world with the gently beleaguered air of an overworked janitor and I quite simply love that for them

[st-hedge]

Some scribble studies of Origins

[risrambles]

bucky barnes vs catching a fucking break

[unpersoniverse]

Skén:nen sá:sewh

as promised, here's Precious boy™ getting kissed by Precious wife™ because he deserves all the love in the world :cc

translation: Get home safe

[spookberry]

Watchin assassination classroom for the first time and im startled everytime yuma talks cuz its the same VA as saiki and also he looks more like saiki's parents than saiki does

Like, cmon

[starry-bi-sky]

i have been unmedicated for the entirety of spring break and thus have had little interest in writing this down, but i have been thinking about this for the entire week (as well as a dpdc clone danny au that resulted in it becoming its entirely separate batman au that includes a teenage vigilante bruce wayne, an ocarina, and me entirely incapable of making a batman au without making bruce dirt poor but we're not talking about that) and so i've finally went 'fuck it' and forcibly grabbed my laptop. I will get this done in one sitting even if it kills me.

BUT. This is about neither clone^2 danny nor about who i am calling Ocarina Batman. This is about my Danyal Al Ghul Au and more SPECIFICALLY it's me thinking about his relationship with Sam and Tucker specifically.

Tucker and Sam? Adore this asshole (affectionate) with every fiber of their being. And it is very much a reciprocated feeling, but Danny's thoughts will not be delved into much other than he would kill for them.

Tucker? The only person currently capable of getting a deep, loud, belly laugh out of Danny. Sam can get him to smile and to laugh, but it's the kind that's a chuckle-under-the-breath. The quiet, looks-down-while-huffing laughter. Snorts once with laughter and then grins stupidly.

But Tucker? Tucker can crack a slew of stupid jokes and Danny will be incapacitated for the next five minutes because he's laughing so hard that he can't breath. He lands one well-timed pun or quip and Danny will be close to tears. His laughter is their favorite sound in the whole world.

Sam is lowkey jealous of this ability, and she's gotten a belly laugh out of Danny a few times. But alas, it is Tucker who wields this power and has gotten it the most times out of the two of them.

-

They're also both physically affectionate with Danny as much as possible. It started roughly around when they were 12-ish, a year since they befriended Danny, and they noticed that he sought after touch but never seemed to initiate (and was in some ways repulsed by it). They started slowly being more touchy with him. Hooking a finger around his to lead him somewhere, tapping his wrist, looping arms. Little touches, grabs, etc, to get him used to it, and once he started doing it back they started increasing it.

It's gotten to a point where he will now just. Lay on them. Like a lizard sunbathing on a rock. Leaning on their backs when they're sitting in class before the bell rings, his chin on their heads. He'll talk about anything with his arms looped around their shoulders.

If they're sitting on a couch at either of their houses, he'll lay his legs on theirs. Him and Tucker will press their feet against the other's and try and push against them (newsflash: Danny always wins, Tucker claims its the ghost strength but Danny's been winning since before his accident)

-

Naturally, both Sam and Tucker know where Danny keeps his weapons on his person, and are allowed to grab them off of him if they need it. His only requirement is that they don't lose his weapons if they take it and forget to return it immediately.

They both understand how big of a thing this is from Danny, and so they do their best to treat his weapons with a lot of respect and care because they know its his way of saying he trusts them.

-

Sam and Tucker are so fond of Danny it's insane. Like fr. That's their goddamn best friend, and they are so protective of him. Emotionally, physically, you name it. They will tear the head off a grown man if they need to, Danny's had scars since he arrived in Amity Park and Sam and Tucker both are going to find the person who put them there and make them pay for it.

One time, Tucker overheard a bunch of upperclass girls speaking nastily about Danny and about the rumors surrounding him, calling him names like 'freak', 'monster', etc. Danny was with him and heard it, and seemingly appeared unbothered by it, even telling Tucker that he was used to such rumors.

Tucker was so furious that hacked into the school system later that night and tanked those girls grades. They were kicked out of their clubs and had to go to mandatory tutoring for the rest of the year. He made sure to leave some way of letting them know it was him who did it.

And Sam doesn't like using her money for things, doesn't like abusing that wealth. So instead, whenever her parents talk bad about Danny, she causes a media incident that has her parents scrambling to deal with. She does something wild, outrageous by her parents' standards.

She heard some boys on the basketball team making fun of Danny once, similar to those girls had. She kicks up a fuss about something eco-unfriendly at school and forcibly holds a protest on the same day of the big home basketball game, forcing them to cancel the event and reschedule to a visiting school.

She anonymously donates money so that there's new uniforms for the team but oops! Looks like she "forgot" to donate enough money for them to get uniforms for all the team members, and strangely enough those boys in particular didn't get them! Looks like they'll have to wait until more money gets donated for the basketball team to get their new, nice uniforms. The old ones look so ratty in comparison, right?

And since the football team gets most of the sport money, that might just take awhile. And if (and when) they kick up a fuss? oops! Off the basketball team you go, :) such unsportsman-like behavior is unfit for the team.

(The only good thing about how corrupt the school system is is that she can use it to her advantage too.)

The both of them know that Danny suspects them for the sudden misfortune falling on these people, but he doesn't call them out on it. He's kinder than he used to be, but not kind enough to vouch for people who speak badly of him. Sometimes, he might just congratulate them on not getting caught.

Because Danny is their wonderful, hurt friend with a "slightly" Blue and Orange Moral code, and enough scars that people have been calling him a criminal (and worse) since he arrived in Amity Park when he was ten. And they'll be damned if he gets hurt anymore.

[cyberstarlope]

I haven't watched clh yet but I have been playing ac2 for the first time so uh. that counts right?

edit: fixed the french pronoun because apparently 2 years of it in school taught me nothing

[jacksdreams]

The thing is, feyre without her powers, training or even food and water can defeat the things NO one could with their powers and training, a fact that has unknowingly been proven again and again even in series where she didn't have page time

🎨: irynkart, jumipinto

[ghost-bxrd]

Spite AU

Titans: *Hanging out.*

Rose: Ass or boobs.

Tim: Thighs.

Bart: Oh, Red Hood's thighs right?

Tim: You can't blame me, they're a work of art.

Rose, Cassie, Cissie, Raven, Kon: True.

Dick:

Dick: 😶😶😶😶

Dick: 🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 87

“Mother, I crave violence.” 

  Danny paused in the middle of his work, turning off the torch as he turned towards Dan. Who had once again be de-aged for destroying a world a few years before. (Ellie had cackled for hours about her being the older sibling now) The currently-six year old was scowling, definitely not pouting. 

  He raised an eyebrow, setting his tools down. “Jordan, we’re literally in an assassin’s den right now-” Honestly running into someone he’d met in his time-traveling was rather interesting, apparently his old rival had become so ecto-contaminated that he was immortal now. “-and I know you just got out of sparring, so are you really ‘craving violence’ or are you just bored?” 

  Dan pouted, sorry, he scowled. “Your ‘friend’s’ kids kept tryin’ to copy me and got in the way.” He hopped up onto one of the chairs, visibly not happy about not being able to fly as he glared at tiny legs. Tough shit, he knew better than to destroy worlds, they couldn’t always reverse time. 

   Danny sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “They’re just trying to play-” Maybe to a human they wouldn’t, but honestly everyone here was so liminal they were probably closer to ghosts than anyone except for Amity. Which had also been displaced in time after getting dragged to the ghost zone, so it had been soaked in ecto longer anyway. 

   “They got in the way and I almost stabbed Dusan!” Dan whined, despite what he’d insist. “At least Elnath can go intangible and Nyssa can dodge!” Ah, that was the issue. He’d been worried. 

   “Little sunbeam, you don’t have to worry,” Danny soothed, scooping up the ghostling. Even though he had been an adult, the chemicals in the brain and body were still that of a child’s. A young child at that. “The trainers are there to keep an accident from happening.” 

  Not to mention that he was rather confident that between Ras and himself they could keep any injuries to minor ones. Sam would have loved to meet him, Danny thinks. Honestly they would have been best friends, but Sam was off on another world on a mission to collect every plant in existence, so good for her, and Tucker was back in the reincarnation cycle. 

  Oh well, at least he wasn’t waiting for them alone, and maybe Dan having more siblings would help stop another timeline-breaking accident from happening. 

[rhapsoddity]

dont have a name for this au yet but!

Its an assassin!Skizz team zits based au,, idk its self indulgent for me to be silly with

<3 I'm rlly happy how these came out

[1doesnotsimplyhavejust1fandam]

Two full seasons of Hen and Karen trying their best to give that little girl a permanent home and keep her close to her brother (both of her brothers! because Denny counts!), and the payoff was a 15 second scene in a song montage in a season finale when we’ve barely even seen Mara or Denny in 8b. If you were going to write Hen and Karen struggling to add to their family across that many seasons (like were they not already agreed on trying IVF with a donor when the ladder truck exploded??? in season TWO???), the scene where they finally completed their family should’ve been paid much more attention and love than that single scene. It’s the same thing with Madney’s baby number two birth scene. Maddie, Chim, and Jee have suffered so much over this season (and since season 2 as well!!) trying to be together and heal as a family. You can’t just shove these adorable children and additions to the 118 family in our faces in 15 second scenes and expect it to feel fulfilling. If you want to have big emergencies in multiple episodes, get better at pacing so that you can show the family moments that you should know by now are the real aspect of the show that makes fans stay. The big emergencies can still be the draw without overwhelming the script and character arcs. These aren’t fulfilled storylines when you wrap things up quickly at the end of the finale’s big emergency because the time after the final commercial is not enough to give the whole firefam their rightful screen time.

[ravenkings]

gonna be real with you guys, i'm increasingly entertaining the idea that luigi didn't actually do it

[castametric]

anyway luigi was a counselor at my school sponsored summer camp back when I was a freshman in high school and the only thing I ever heard about him was that he didn’t even main luigi in mario kart

[bumblingest-bee]

it's the 2 year anniversary of the time i clicked on a low-res youtube video of a sondheim musical i'd never listened to and ended up awake all night entranced by an insane, hilarious, bone-chilling, unnervingly relevant show about a bunch of assassins. i have remained in this fugue state of obsession ever since and i show no signs of awakening anytime soon, so i think it's safe to say by now that assassins is my favorite musical of all time. (it's not a phase, mom!)

[emblemxeno]

I think the thing that really bugs me when people talk about "3H is so much better than Fates in terms of grey morality"... is that it only focuses on a very specific subset of greyness as a whole. When you actually take a step back from the perspective the game shows you, it's actually not morally complex in the slightest, especially compared to Fates.

For Fódlan, you're introduced to a fundamentally broken system that thrives off of eugenicist breeding, abuse, tyranny, technological stagnation, religious dogma, theocracy and experimentation that saw a young girl watch her fellow test subjects almost all die having Crests implanted into them just to create a superhuman. Said theocracy is staved by a consummate liar who's basically "Corrin, but gone wrong and a terrible human being" with an inability to let go of severe mommy issues or the ability to let go of her hatred and genocide denialism, intentionally keeping up a lie to make the most of it. Said subject leader ended up wanting to cast down the oppressive system to make one of "merit," but becomes an imperialistic, authoritarian revanchist who stages a war of total conquest to enforce that order, and in her ending, doesn't even fully dismantle the titles of nobility outright. Dimitri was genuinely a decent person before the massacre that killed most of his family and almost everyone he loved, causing him to go under severe psychosis that, when unraveled, causes him to turn into a bloodlusted maniacal tyrant who's more in line with Ashnard from FE9 than the typical "good boy lord" archetype since Marth. The least horrible of the bunch is a neoliberal schemer who sides with the strongest side (in VW it's the Church, in GW it's against the church) who can and does show a willingness to drop his interests like a hot potato when it suits him and openly intended to have Almyra invade Fódlan to establish the continent as his own suzerain state. And each of them, if not held back by the sheer divine grace of Byleth's mute ass, ends up committing tons of atrocities in the opposition to manipulate the audience into thinking they chose the "right" side. Hell, even in YOUR route it's strongly implied you're doing the things in the other routes and the story just doesn't want you to consider it because you're the good guy from your POV.

They're all awful and war criminals, and no matter what people say, that isn't moral greyness or moral complexity. Having a story where there isn't a clearly-defined sense of right and wrong, good and bad, to define morally grey conflict as a whole leads to a story where they're all horribly awful if the story isn't smart enough to recognize it doesn't fully absolve them as a person for your actions nor does it dehumanize them. People set a 0-100 scale that's never in the middle assuming a war criminal is either a goodest boy who did no wrong or a violent monster who needs to be put down and not made excuses for it, when the truth is that people are far more complicated than they seem on the wholesale. 3H doesn't do this, it wants you to think your side is always the good guys and the enemy side is sympathetic but still the bad guys. And it does this to avoid pushing forward the truth that you're genuinely no better and that the story is openly feeding you an extremely impressionistic lie of events. This is where any moral greyness falls apart, as without any kind of acknowledgement of your side's failings in a morally grey conflict, there is no hope of making a story that's actually morally grey. You created "hero defeats woobie villain" type story-writing, just slapped a coat of paint calling it morally grey when it isn't.

To give a contrast, Fates goes out of its way to avoid ignoring the actions and consequences of Corrin's choices. All of the routes have players make choices that cause a severe lapse of judgement that leads to bloodshed on both sides and innocent people on both sides dying. On Birthright, you're intentionally invoked ludonarrative dissonance by Corrin in that route being loud and aggressive of killing Garon and not questioning the "good kingdom vs. evil empire" conflict... with not only Corrin not even trying to stymie the bloodshed, but the abundance of route maps and killing waves upon waves of enemies influences that bloodshed and is meant to make players question their actions even as they kill recruitable, named soldiers on the other side. Even Ryoma, by openly lying to Corrin about not about being blood related, is more morally complex because he did so in order to keep Corrin and his family together and because it's essential data, nevermind that Ryoma is strongly implied to know Nohr is starving and just... do nothing about it, feigning ignorance with Silas's explanation in Birthright Chapter 23. Even as far as Corrin being a genuinely good person, they still kill thousands in-story and they don't really care about who lives and who dies as long as it's not their Nohrian siblings, and this leads to Xander accidentally killing Elise and then committing suicide by cop. All while Corrin teaches Ryoma to change as a better person.

Conquest is even more morally complex and grey; Corrin goes back to Nohr with the inability to betray the only family they've ever known and try to end this madness internally, before realizing the privilege they commanded as a Nohrian royal and tried to sabotage the Nohrian war effort and work in any kind of change. He succeeded in ensuring no casualties in small skirmishes, but he failed miserably trying to ensure no deaths in Cheve as it suddenly made them realize the rot is far too institutional for them to fully reform; Garon is a flesh-puppet piloted by Anankos with no regard for anything but destroying both kingdoms, his two trusted men are evil, and the Nohrian royals are deep in denial their father who was once loving and kind has become rotten and abusive and caused so much trauma they don't want to even acknowledge he's been gone for so long. It's a frightening realistic depiction of an abusive household with how the Nohrian royals self-rationalize their control over a fundamentally fucked-up situation, and Corrin begins to see that when Azura reveals Garon's true form. Knowing that the Yato as is isn't strong enough to pierce Garon's blessing from the Rainbow Sage and actually defeat them (which is strongly implied if not all-but-confirmed to operate similarly to Ashnard and BK's blessings in FE9), they need to show Garon's true form to the army... so they intentionally and knowingly abet the genocidal invasion of Hoshido, needing to sacrifice his ideals to save as many people as he can in the least horrible, fucked-up way possible. Along the way while they save a few thousands die in the invasion and Corrin ends up seriously mentally breaking up along the way as he's forced to nearly kill his two brothers and become demonized by the nation he's putting to the sword for the greater good, as he's forced to keep up the lie of a heartless invader until it just... becomes too much. And this is the route people have the most issues with, despite being the route that is so fucking complex that it gives everyone the moral sympathy needed to be empathized with, while not excusing their actions.

What Fates does exceedingly well that 3H doesn't is that it recognizes that the characters' choices are their own actions, and expects readers to pay attention to dialogue to connect fundamental revelations of the plot. It doesn't need to make its characters morally hazy-feely or war criminals with fundamentally unsympathetic traits to make them morally complex, it does this by having the fundamental concept behind Fates is two forces of good people being trapped in a fundamentally violent and horrible war that threatens to tear the continent apart in the process. And Fates does that so exceptionally well by having actual moral complexity to the characters that merits reasons to go down each of the routes while not being so non-committal to calling out injustice or bad actions in the story that it completely destroys any point it has. With Fates, I get the feeling of two families and armies of good people trapped in a war that's engineered by a broken god wanting to destroy the world and both kingdoms. With 3H, I get the feeling many people in Syria felt about each of the factions being staffed with war criminals, rapists and mass-murderers. I can sympathize with all sides of Fates because it recognizes their actions as they are while not diluting their complexity as characters. I cannot sympathize with 3H's lords because they are all so solely-defined by their end slates that no amount of blood, violence or suffering will ever be enough to end the war and them crossing lines even Ryoma would never, ever do. Ryoma, as in the guy who runs basically Fates's equivalent of the Ninja CIA with all the ugliness it implies. Even he wouldn't do what Edlegard, Rhea and Dimitri stoop to in their oppositional and player routes, and while the story humanizes Ryoma, it just expects us to love 3H's blorbos so much we just begin making jokes about how war crimes are "expected" of the series and we should still forgive them because... the story presents it better?

It's a major reason the shitting on Fates's story while lofting 3H as the better one irritates me so much; Fates had an actual writer who was committed to the greater narrative and nuances of the characters that got botched in the implementation of the JP script (which was why IF was even more panned there than Fates was here, which has regular appreciators outside of hardcore FE fans) and got fixed in the localization (despite its flaws), while 3H expects people to just believe they're the good guys without actually thinking about what their actions entails or making consequences stick. And I think it's most infuriating because the reason why people got so weird about Fates, especially Conquest, is because it was so willing to make the player feel uncomfortable with their actions and provoke intentional dissonance in their actions of being rewarded for the right inputs as a Good Gamer™ versus the very visible suffering it causes, and it not saying to the camera "And That's Terrible" and expecting it to be evident within the context and subtext of the work. For many people, it wasn't, and gave such a bad first impression regardless of the sheer cohesive validity of the work that they just wrote it off and dismissed an amazing story as too little value to actually analyze. Meanwhile, 3H's logos, ethos and pathos follow-through sucked ass, but people forgave it because of the lore boner people had and because, when you break it down, 3H is no different than the "good guy vs. evil empire" stories the fandom derides, it just does so in a way that makes those your route deems "evil" sympathetic even when they really aren't. It was so telling that when FE fans said "We want grey morality!" what they really meant was "We want to be morally, objectively correct and rewarded for being a Good Gamer™ while the enemy army has a sob story that makes them sympathetic while still morally, objectively wrong!". In hindsight, it's not hard to see why, Arvis, Lyon and BK are the series's most popular villains, but it's not good writing to apply that to a story about war criminals while thinking sob stories serve as a sufficient excuse to unconscionable atrocities, because FE fans don't want to feel responsible for their actions. They're literally the kind of people Spec Ops: The Line critiques about the typical military FPS dudebro wanting to feel like a hero for being a war criminal, only implied to an intelligence ego-driven bunch of virgin nerds who cannot agree on basic fucking canon details.

...this was a really long ask, so I'll TL;DR it with "FE fans are bad at media analysis and really should stop calling 3H better written than Fates when 3H refuses to actually analyze its own context while Fates does so extensively in giving each of the cast initiative, including for their own fuck-ups."

While I will push back a little against some of the assertions regarding Rhea and Claude (and also Dimitri somewhat) given their circumstances of being the ones on the defense in 3H, I vehemently agree with your assessment, and that's why 3H in general falls flat for me in its storytelling.

Fates, as you say, has intentional dissonance that makes you question your actions when provided with more information the further you get into the game. 3H's dissonance just reads very unintentional.

Edelgard's entire route is obvious low hanging fruit, especially the scene where she executes Dimitri, accusing him of "being obsessed with her" when she's invading his country for no fucking reason other than wanting to enforce her will on independent countries. Instead of going to therapy, she decided to kill a bunch of people, she's nuts and will never not be a shit person.

But to your point, there are other lines in 3H that read similarly ridiculous, fanning the dissonance.

Edelgard and Claude's lines to Kostas in chapter 2 about "being noble and commoner isn't different and you don't have the right to kill actually", and they both sound like immature fuckwads. Claude's consistent push to pry information out of people is insensitive at best, and borders on invasion of privacy. Claude constantly both sides-ing the church and Edelgard, and that's not even going into the shit he pulls in Hopes. Dimitri both sides-ing the dynamic of nobles getting rid of their successors for not having crests. Dimitri constantly trying to find the best in Edelgard after he begins his recovery, to the point where an unbelieveable parley scene occurs, like give me a break. Rhea is never able to confront her issues and mistakes on screen unless she's dying or being romanced by Byleth. Sylvain's "battle of ideals" line in Azure Moon, Dorothea being sad over Ferdie in AM or VW despite him being kind of a coward in that he doesn't have the stones to bite back at Edelgard, Mercedes also has a line about Ferdinand, in general just the entire spiel that side characters make about fighting old friends because "there's no choice."

Does this cast have any self awareness or agency, or not? That's why I rail against Byleth's presence in the plot so much, because he's treated as the end all be all of what is right/moral/correct. Sure, characters can feel bad about what they're doing, but because Byleth (i.e. the player) is there, they must be on the right path in the end. And everyone has to be sypmathetic when you're against them because there has to be room for Byleth (i.e. the player) to have enough reason to join them in another route, otherwise the multi route structure doesn't make sense.

In concept it's already a story structure that warps itself around what makes the player insert feel most good, but in execution it's somehow even worse. And that's because all of it is done in dialogue, many lines of which I've already mentioned. You're not supposed to think about the material reality of the shitty things these characters do and say, because the priority is that they can tug at your heart enough for you to excuse them/fix them/justify them.

Claude is ultimately not a bad person as a whole, but the game really wants you to not consider how feckless and fickle he can be when faced with bad odds, especially when he kind of effectively abandons an entire country that he's supposed to be leading whenever Byleth's not supporting him. Rhea and Dimitri are snug fit into either "crazed opposition that must be taken care of" or "person project that You need to get a handle on", both interpretations taking agency away from making the player seem like a bad person or going in the opposite direction by making the player the ONLY person who's able to save them from themselves. And Edelgard is the queen of never being held to account the damage that she does, always skirting responsibility in-game and in the fandom because "she just did what she felt she had to," "sometimes change takes sacrifice and horrible choices," or "she just wanted to WALK with you, sensei!" All in an attempt to get you to not care what you do when siding with her, and to make you feel bad for her when you don't side with her.

The player must never feel bad about the objectively bad things they do, and must always feel correct and justified in the things they feel are correct. That's the 3H M.O. When you recognize that the people you side with are kinda shitty no matter the route, it's not because the writers wanted you to, it's because you put the time in the think about it long enough. The game wanted you to feel bad about the war because "we used to be FRIENDS", not because of the terrible things you do in the war in the first place, as if the methods and machinations aren't a significant part of why warfare fucking sucks.

And as you say, and I mostly agree on, is the Fates M.O. is not shying away from the negative impacts that Corrin's choice had. In Birthright, Corrin's close Nohrian allies/siblings die because of the choice he made, because siding with Hoshido had a ripple effect on how those near and dear to him were treated by Garon. Another part of Birthright's narrative is the Hoshidan cast having to get used to Corrin just being himself, and trusting that a Nohrian isn't who they believe them to be. Exposing Ryoma's ignorance and showing that his arrogant juggernaut plans aren't gonna cut it when it comes to establishing a lasting peace, is critical in showing that, yeah, mindlessly fighting Nohr doesn't fix the root problems. It intentionally pulls the rug under the player by going "yeah your side kind of fucking sucks for charging at Nohr all this time, when these are people with dreams, loved ones and livelihoods."

Conquest puts a twist on this, by having Corrin be relatively successful in some areas when it comes to changing perceptions towards Nohr, helping people gain autonomy from a brutal regime, and actively undermining the horrible things that war has its soldiers do. The rug pull is then done during chapter 13, and again after the Sakura map, where Corrin is smacked with the reality that sometimes you fucking fail at what you're trying to do in story, despite the player succeeding in gameplay. The player representative doesn't have complete control nor is he treated with kid gloves in Fates when faced with the ugliness from his side and the opposition.

And what's greatest about it, is that it's showing you, rather than employing a missable dialogue in a monastery about how sad it is to fight against former classmates. Dude, I know it's sad, is that really all you can say? The message begins to dull when it's bashed over your head too much, and especially when there's no meaningful impact in story, all because there can't be because Byleth (the player) has to be accounted for as the ultimate arbiter of who joins him or not. You can't avoid feeling shitty about Scarlet, like you can with Ferdie. You can try your best trying to get around the retainers in Fates when you fight them, but they still have crushing death lines because the story is written to accommodate the fact that you're killing people who aren't evil at their core. 3H has to make sure you can avoid that before a war even starts. Flora and Ryoma's suicides, Xander's suicide-by-cop, Takumi's descent, the fates of the Kitsune and Wolfskin who were caught in bad circumstances (something that, despite claims of poor writing, happens all the fucking time and is another shitty thing about war that more need to recognize); the topics of isolationism, war profiteering, subterfuge and treason, spy networks and thievery, the ethics of bystanderism, FUCKING CIVILIAN CASUALTIES.

That last one-alongside the general idea of trying to win a war with as little bloodshed as possible-is one of the prime driving forces of an ENTIRE ROUTE in Fates, and is still pretty prevalent for Corrin's beliefs in the other two. In 3H? Barely a footnote in all honesty, and more so an extension of how other characters are perceived. Edelgard forcing civilians to stay when Enbarr is under siege? Claude says "it takes some resolve, I gotta hand it to her." Remire being destroyed and the Empire doing fuck all? Uhhh, look over there, they got taken in by Rhea, don't worry about it. What about the effects of the Alliance being dismantled and given to the Empire, Kingdom or the church? Or showing more of the people in the monastery town that face the most danger from the Imperial invasion or the thieves after the timeskip? None of this is treated as the horrific circumstance it is, so it ends up as fridge horror you think about at 2 a.m.

Thinking about how the war affects the common people and civilians isn't the main priority in any of 3H's routes as far as I can remember, since it's just lumped in with the vague "too much bloodshed, doesn't war suck" aesop. We never dive into the specifics of why war sucks in 3H because doing that has the potential for the player to materially feel bad about what they're doing, so instead we always have a cushion to assuage our feelings in by being reminded that Byleth (the player) is the pinnacle of good and always knows the right thing to do in the end. Which is shallow, vapid, and utterly spineless in a simulation game series about war.

A lot of this is fueled by my anti-3H though, so I'm very willing to take corrections on things I flat out get wrong, I haven't played that game to completion in like a over a year, so the details are finally getting hazy.