#golden deer

[burr-ell]

If it's alright, can I ask why you like the Golden Deer house more than the Blue Lions or Black Eagle houses? Like, what caught your eye about them over everyone else?

So I actually got into FE3H through a friend of mine, @dar-draws, who I already knew through mutual good taste (Dickkory), and fanarts like this one, this one, and this one plus the way she talked about Claude and Claudeleth caught my attention. I watched a couple playthroughs of the Golden Deer route on YouTube and absolutely fell in love (before finally getting a switch just to play it myself, for which I was violently bullied here). So like, I was already going into the game biased, which is part of why when I got it I went ahead and played through Golden Deer before doing all the other routes in turn; it was genuinely important to me to personally see all sides of the story. But even as I've played the other routes and replayed SS and AM and gained even more of an appreciation for them, I'm still always sort of drawn back to VW and the Deer.

I think it's ultimately vibes-based, but I'll try to articulate it. I'm not really a big fan of "cozy" sorts of games—I've played and enjoyed ACNH, but the things I most enjoyed about that game were finding things to do and goals to complete, like completing the main quest line or filling up the museum. So it's not so much that I find the Golden Deer to be cozy so much as adventurous. They're not inherently personally invested in the conflicts of White Clouds (they don't know Lord Lonato or Miklan, and their house leader isn't [gestures generally]), but they're also not just ping-ponging through the story. They go through the same events as the other two houses, but they're coming at it from more of an outsider's perspective, and their choice to get involved and react and respond feels more active.

The Deer also don't have any real reason to follow Claude, either, and in the early game they make sure he knows it; none of them are really all that concerned that they're speaking to the future Grand Duke of their country. Lysithea snaps at him, Leonie shoots the breeze with him, Raphael is jovial with him, Lorenz undercuts him, Hilda is blase with him, Marianne tries not to talk to him, and Ignatz gets into theological debates with him. Over the course of the game, they develop the same loyalty to Claude that the other house members already have for their leaders almost by default, and it feels a lot more earned because we see it happen. And that in turn makes scenes like the one at Myrddin, where Claude reveals his true goal of opening the border with Almyra and embracing foreign cultures and the other Deer are surprised but trust Claude and follow his lead, that much more satisfying.

I was a little surprised, when I played through the other three routes, that aside from the designated talking-with-the-cast scenes every route gets, the characters who aren't house leaders or retainers don't really have all that much to do in the story. On Verdant Wind, you pretty consistently have members of the Golden Deer appearing in other cutscenes and giving their two cents; there's even a unique scene where Lysithea realizes there's something up with the Empire's mages because of her backstory and approaches Claude and Byleth about it. It's nothing too obtrusive—they do still have to accommodate the potential for character death—but it's those small details that make a difference to me. Every house has a particular dynamic with odd silly quirks, but the Deer being just that little bit more integrated into the story really helps sell the idea that they belong here and they're making this story their own.

There's also the matter of where specifically their adventure takes them. I respect the choice to focus on Dimitri in Azure Moon, because it does handle his character and arc very well and I think also does the other Lions justice (with the exception of Dedue), but it's also focused largely on Dimitri's personal arc and the Tragedy of Duscur and doesn't really follow through on a lot of the events of White Clouds. (Which some Blue Lions stans have been okay with because they think the Agarthans are bad villains, which...that's valid, but stories still have to like, address plot elements they set up.) Verdant Wind, by contrast, does actually pull back and try to figure out the real impetus behind the whole conflict, and it ends with them beginning to properly lay Fodlan's true problems to rest.

So while the route isn't flawless and I do think there are issues with how characters are written that are part of larger trends within the game and the series as a whole, there's a very specific kind of fantasy adventure energy with the Golden Deer that I enjoy. I think the stories I'm most drawn to are the ones that keep their eyes on a specific goal but still make you feel like the characters would bring that same energy to goofing around with each other, and I think that's something Verdant Wind does very well.

[jaeokiedokie]

Fire Emblem Three Houses!!

[munette]

FE3H Pre & Post Timeskip Artworks

[hekxate]

happy five year anniversary fire emblem three houses. it’s the timeskip now…

[kardothys]

A tribute for 5 years of Fire Emblem Three Houses 🦁🫎🦅

An animation I made with my beloved friends over the course of 2-3 weeks! We worked really hard on this 🙏

[boom-doodles]

golden girlies ✨

[krazieka2]

vamps.png

[tishtish4]

Happy Anniversary FE3H! 💍💛

5 years of shipping these two and loving the Golden Deer 💖

[calamari-inari]

Happy 5th Anniversary! ❤️💙💛💜

A whole timeskip come and gone... 🥺

[iubworks]

Seiros

[cherrypikkins]

Thank you everyone who participated in the fe3h portrait request this year, whether by making requests, liking, reblogging or leaving nice comments :3

Here is the full compilation of all the works I managed to finish! For certain characters I went back and did some very minor touch-ups, just so they look a bit more consistent. That said, you can see how my style changed quite over time :3;;; Which is fine! I wanted to experiment with the soft texture brushes and try to come up with a style that would look crisp when zoomed out, but also look interesting close up. I hope I managed to achieve that, and that it looks good!!

Don't forget to vote for the final character portrait here!

Hope I can get a chance to do this again one day, it was super fun!!! And, I hope you guys had fun too~

[villtura]

7/24

[momochanners]

FE3H - Dear Teach, Chapter 3

Previous chapter

Thank you to my patrons for their encouragement & support in making this ongoing comic possible <3

[paunchsalazar]

Mister Leader Man

[battry-acid]

seteth timeskip design for events that haven't happened yet in @merlyybird's fic :3

[just-an-otaku-fox]

I made this :3

credit to @_videojames_ig on instagram for the audio!