#i think to some people the lolcalised version is the only version that exists and is canon which is uh

[randomnameless]

hey, sending this anonymously because i try to avoid the prying eyes of the weird fe fans when i can- but stumbled across your blog recently and had to tell you i appreciate it! you have a lot of the same insights to the games (both old and new) that i do, and it was a relief to find someone who can see through a lot of the bullshit writing/localization in games like fe16 and isnt afraid to point out how ridiculous the treatment of some characters and story lines are. i got very seriously harassed on fire emblem twitter during 2019 when 3h released and i was vocal about my disdain for edelgard and her route, so finding this corner of tumblr where people don't pull any punches calling out the racism and antisemitic vibes of the whole thing is refreshing.

No worries anon!

It's kind of sad we can't exchange or talk without going all "anon" like, and while I want to say it's exclusively because of the FE16 wank, imo it's a deeper current in the fandom, where some people just don't know how to enjoy things without ruining other people's enjoyment anymore!

Like sure, if there's something you disagree with, usually you'd make a reply, and then they're would be discussion, and ultimately everyone would part ways and joke about memes or something stupid, but now it's full on insults, spam asks and harassment...

I remember an old meme around circulating on SF that would be posted each time someone started a topic with "am i the only one who thinks X is better than Y" or something, and each time there'd be a person going all "yes you're the only one of the millions of internet users around the net lol"

But sure, in 2019 it was a bit, uh, complicated to have dissenting opinions because everyone bought a certain narrative and refused to consider anything else no matter where you went, so at least I thought on Tumblr I could post whatever I wanted without attracting the downvote pogroms from redshit or that one posted who posted each day for several weeks a post on the 3H topic about how Supreme Leader is good ackshually - but apparently even Tumblr isn't a safespace anymore, since people were harassed out of the general FE community!

Still, fwiw, I'll still be there to enjoy the things I like about the Fodlan verse, and let others enjoy the things they like about the Fodlan verse, and that's it and make fire jokes

Lizards BaD and the reason why Fodlan sucks, and actually the meta reason why every FE world sucked at one point?

Have that instead :

Modern!AU where Seteth accepted to house his siblings for a few months, but ends up kicking them out when Indech drinks all of his milk and puts the empty bottle back in the fridge, when Rhea gave the keys of Seteth's newest car to Willy, or when Macuil told him to shut up because he was watching cartoons with Flayn.

[randomnameless]

FantasyInvader reply on the Edelstans going full circle on “translation=making Edelgard look bad” is the first time I heard of Treehouse hating Rhea, but it honestly makes sense now that I think about it.

Oh,

TBH I ranted a few years ago about the localisation and the direction Cherami Leigh received to dub Rhea, and, uh, well...

I don't think she hates the character or anything, she just goes with the direction given, but man what a load of crap Pat told her lol - she made an interview where she says Pat told her Rhea has a hair-trigger temper (tfw she only loses her shit when you try to reenact the genocide she escaped when she was younger - but nah it's just a hair trigger temper) and how Rhea "just is", something we know is bullcrap because she's the same person who's insecure about "bothering" people if she eats with them, Rhea isn't the assured person she tries to pretend to be, but Pat dgaf.

Regardless of the meaning of the quotes, if you have time to spare of the feh wiki, just compare the delivery of lolcalised!Rhea and Inoue!Rhea (her Halloween alt is telling), they're like night and day - but in the game proper, we have the fe datamine website !

Short story : Lolcalised!Rhea isn't supposed to emote bar being AnGrY, monotone (that line where she worries about Aelfie's plans in the DLC could be swapped with her reading the notice of aspirin) or have 2 lines where she's relaxed (billy supports) - Jp!Rhea is allowed to be upset, to mourn, to be worried, cheerful etc etc.

I've already complained a lot about FE16's lolcalisation, cultural bias at play and wanting to soften a certain character, but to exaggerate only a little bit, I have the feeling Rhea was portrayed in the lolcalisation (and not localisation, the lol is very important) as the ultimate bogeyman of the "dictatorial evil leader of an organised religion who is also a zealot and does not tolerate dissent because she's religious" which has...

idk, but serious issues because again, if you are supposed to localise a product you cannot edit something red to be something violet and sparkly and if the shitstorm (that ultimately came from a misunderstanding!) about "creative localisation" is any indication, more and more people are fed up with lolcalisations altering the meaning, not of a word, but of a game to suit their own agendas.

Oh, and not specifically tied to Rhea but in a way it is because it adopts Supreme Leader's prop a ganda words :

A friend earlier noticed that the NoA official website - where you can buy the game (digital version) - adverstises Fodlan as a land controlled by the Church of Seiros. Oddly (lel) enough, this "controlled by the Church of Seiros" crap of a tidbit doesn't appear in the japanese website, and even in the european ones!

I don't believe we got another version compared to the Treehouse version - even if at times, the french script is closer to the japanese one and at times they come up with their own bullshit - but there is a point to be said that in a certain part of the world, the game was advertised in a way that kind of fit a certain's characters POV, something that doesn't exist in the rest of the world. And it's in that same "part of the world" that the person who directed the VA for the eng dub, well, worked and directed said VA.

So what, is it some great conspiracy or something else? lol no.

Did Treehouse told NoA "don't worry, I've got this game, I'll localise it just close your eyes and market it that's all" and they went bonkers? And for some reason whoever was in charge at the NoE branch didn't close their eyes (maybe half-closed) so we have a weird mix between the two? idk.

[randomnameless]

I'm convinced. These Edelgard stans do not have an ability to analyze media and are from another planet. How can you mess up basic FE facts that bad. I haven't even played all the games and I know the humans started the war in FE7. This is on the level of forgive me for the comparison, the 2020 election in America was rigged and everything is Antifa's fault. Ignoring basic facts. What the absolute f?

I usually try to avoid posting anything about politics on this blog, since it's fandom oriented blog but -

I heavily suspect there's a lot of bad faith takes at play here, or heavy copium because Supreme Puppet is, at least in KT's mind, a thing.

Back in my days, trolling was fun, people wrote 10k words as bait, then someone replied and the troll answered, in turn, with a "troll" answer outing themselves as a troll.

But here it's different, the lack of proper grammar, spelling and punctuation suggest a low effort low quality troll, and using arguments that were already debunked? It's as if it's a microwave reheated dish, it becomes soggy.

Still, while I think some are high on something that should not be legal, I think the horrendous lolcalisation did not help stir them in the "right" way, aka the way intended by the devs.

With all those Church BaD added elements (remember the Abyss NPC complaining about the Church not giving money to rebuil her home? and the "unless the goddess wills it"? + Rhage being, Rhage?) so when the game, which is already a failure because it tries to deal with different narrators but fails, doesn't even acknowledges its basic facts, what are you left with? A patchwork some people can use to push a certain narrative, if they bend the piece of tissue they took, bleach it, pass it 15 seconds to the flamethrower and ultimately clone it.

Would the bad takes have proliferated if the lolcalisation didn't lol the localisation?

I still think so because body pillows and cultural differences and refusal to interact with something that isn't specifically tailored for "a certain audience" (remember the CoS is a the (Roman bcs those people most likely think it's the only one) Catholic Church post, because they straight up refused to take into consideration the other themes and influences of the game, focusing on an aesthetic instead?) - but, imo, for people who were on the fence, the lolcalised version made them fall for a certain narrative, that was, imho, not the one intended by the devs.

IDK if the release of a remake will re-ignite the "elitist v. casual" player debate, but I swear if some wild takes are thrown about Jugdral, completely missing the point of the game, rude words will be exchanged because, hey, some people legit spent 10 years (or even more!) theorizing/analysing/nerding/fandoming about this verse and its 55 supplementary materials, because you cannot bend an already existing material to fit a certain waifu's narrative

(unless the devs do it first, like they did in Nopes, and rude words were spoken).

[randomnameless]

The fact that there are tons of people who refuses to see the original Japanese script as Canon really pisses me off. For bloody sake. It's a damn Japanese game. It's like if that certain version is more favored to their palates they'll just take it and insists that's the Canon one. Sounds like a whole lot of copium to me. Or the only language that exists for them is English. Ugh... Screw localisation issues

IDK if you're the same anon -

Ultimately I think everyone can enjoy the game they like and all, but when we're trying to write meta or discuss about meta related things...

That's where it fails.

Pat'n'pals's FE16 and 3 Nopes lean heavily in a "Church BaD" narrative, even if they couldn't outright erase and supress some lines due to "creative writing" or something.

But some people will try to extrapolate and analyse a lolcalisation exclusive line, and see what it brings to the game - that has never been written with the lolcalised line in mind.

Remember that line about Supreme Leader and the Slithers and who was supposed to be the puppet or the other? JP version of Tru Piss has Cornelia express surprise at Supreme Leader manipulating the Slithers, launching torpedos at the "uwu small girl was forced to do bad things bcs mole people bad" ship.

But too late, that ship already sailed anf fueled a long ass fic, thousand of takes and trillions of words about... fanon!Supreme Leader. Rather, lolcalised!fanon!Supreme Leader.

That post I rb'd today?

While I was still browsing redshit, many people said Clout offered a chance to surrender to Rhea (despite, you know, he and Supreme Leader's support or his earlier lines) and lo! This "maybe you could run away" was a lolcalisation exclusive line - should we be happy that the og game doesn't bring out (this time) the old'n'tried victim blaming "She forces me to kill her bcs she doesn't want to run away" ??

Maybe... or maybe not, since og!Clout instead double downs on the "if i'm killing you it's just because I want to see the world change lel" knowing well there's no option where she gets out of this place alive (rather, where Clout lets her get out of this place alive).

Back to redshit, we have people who wrote 50k words about the game, how deep and interesting it is and how it has ~meaningful themes~ only to discover that those themes and things they love about the game...

Were add-ons from the lolcalisation team.

The thing they love is not FE16, but lolcalised!FE16 - pointing it out will make some people rage because hey, they spent 800 hours talking about this game and the realisation that their discourse and walls of text are actually talking about the loLcalised copy pisses people.

Take it with a grain of salt, as a french loser who always switch to JP audio when available, but I have the feeling redshit and some fans really love "their game" and not "the game". Like, idk, maybe to the point of criticising Kikuko Inoue thinking she should act more like "Rhea" when she voices the character.

Is it entitlement because some people refuse to consider/interact with something that wasn't made "for" them?

Can you imagine, in this day and age, someone modifying/replacing ATLA's OST to make it more "palatable" to a french audience, and french people insisting that this "French OST" is a better fit for the scenes and conveys themes better than the original OST?

---

Tl; Dr : Anyone can have their favored version of pizza crust.

But when you start to develop theories about Naples’s cuisine and the importance of the thick crust in this cuisine based on the pizzas you find in Pizza Hut, you shouldn’t feel offended when people remind you that, no, Neapolitan pizza is something specific and it doesn’t have a thick, Pizza Hut crust.

So the previous essay is... well, completely missing the point, because you’re not talking about the topic of your essay, but talking about a “copy” of the main subject of your essay.

[randomnameless]

The whole issue seems super disrepectful to the original creators. Like, they put the time and effort into creating a story and characters, only for some translator to go "yeah, but I want to write them my way and take ownership for the story." That's just peak arrogance, and I can't fault Japanese creators like Anno clamping down on changes made to the script if that's the attitude.

Anno?

There's changing the script - without justifying it by localisation reasons - and changing the script because some dude wanted to tell a story so used an already existing media as medium.

And then you end up with the lolcalised Fates, or the lolcalised FE16 - like, I don't think there is going to be a giant backlash at Treehouses for FE16, because people were completely but the supposed "grey morality" and the game itself didn't want to tank their waifu - so we have people still thinking, 3 years after the release of the game, after a dev interview, after Heroes (as a side material) comforting the devs and the general idea that no, waifu is wrong and lizard lady was framed to make the "twist" more impactful...

3 years later, some people still think Fodlan was ruled by the Church of Seiros, Faerghus doesn't deserve to exist and space lizards are the reason why everything is wrong in Fodlan.

Is it because of the lolcalisation? I don't think so. Were the lolcalisers the first ones unhappy with the game and they tried to "edit" it to make it more Cap* - friendly? IDK.

Why was this lolcalisation born? IDK.

But honestly, people like Kevin'n'Tommy'n'Jenny are really showing a bad image on the localisation business.

IDK how Bamco or major companies will deal with those wonky localisations - will they try to have some in-house localisation and we will return to the era of delays between a jp version and an US/European one - or trust independant localising companies again, hoping Kevin'n'pals will be fired?

I will always pick the OG voices, and subtitles, when available, because I grew up with the yellow subtitles - I thought I might switch when FE15 was released, but Rhage? Damn, here goes. Even if her tone and words don't match the script, I'll take Inoue over Leigh (as directed by Pat) everyday.