#it doesn't matter that Dimitri tries to DO shit to be a better person - he's already been deemed Bad and Irredeemable

[butwhatifidothis]

I’m still flabbergasted by that one comment on Dimitri though. “he still wants to try and be a good person” my man (or woman), my dude. Trying to be a good person is ultimately what makes someone a good person, people are defined by what they do. Then again this fic does seem to function on the basis of someone being born an innocent or a monster and none of their action affect that so maybe it’s not surprising.

Honestly, I have no idea what about Dimitri and his actions that make him so unforgiveable in the minds of Edelstans when they... like EdeIgard. Like, what specific line did Dimitri cross and EdeIgard didn't that makes the former irredeemable and the latter fine?

Because, even if we're being flat-out wrong and say that Dimitri was always of completely sound mind when he did all of the stuff he did - trying to torture Randolph, charging into Gronder without thinking about his friends and men following him - and if we go so far as to say that his actions during the timeskip itself - killing Imperial soldiers, officials, children - were always 100% unjustified murder, when we compare that to what all EdeIgard's done?

Spearheading a war that lasts five years, being directly responsible for the deaths of what is, being laughably generous, hundreds of people. Laying siege on a building she knew held many, many defenseless people, without letting them evacuate. Starving her citizens. Hiding behind her citizens when backed in a corner. Invading a neutral nation. Assisting in the murder of Rufus by giving Cornelia troops. Conscripting her citizens (or, at best, being completely ignorant of what Thales is doing to her citizens despite supposedly keeping a close eye on him). Ethnic cleansing, both in the sense of driving out and actively persecuting the religious as well as wanting to end the Nabatean race. Utilizing Demonic Beasts. Keeping Rhea in decrepit conditions but still going on with her war despite saying that it was Rhea's influence that caused her to declare war in the first place - with it being revealed that she kept Rhea alive so that she'd eventually be given over to TWS. Spying on her citizens (Hubert's ending with Dorothea). Having a secret police (Hubert's ending with Shamir). Arranging political marriages in exchange for a country's freedom (Petra's ending with Hubert).

And that's just what she does post ts. And probably isn't even everything. And doesn't include things she does in pre ts that continue on to post ts.

So, again, even with the absolute worst interpretation of Dimitri you could possibly have (including just deadass lies), what on fuckin' earth makes EdeIgard of all characters the more morally sound option over him? She does far worse shit far more often and doesn't even try to make up for it, like Dimitri does his shit. She doesn't even regret what she does! By her own admission (in FEH at least)! All she does is never shut up about how her path is totally the only way Fodlan could ever ever get peace and- ohhhh, wait, that's all the fic has her do too. Just say shit and pretend it's true, without her actually doing anything to prove it. Nvm, figured it out lmaoooo

[travelling-on-the-octopath]

Tweet I found: "Fire Emblem takes one of the most beloved FE protagonists and makes him live up to the promise of being a morally gray genius who plays both sides ON TOP of giving him a character arc."

I'm sorry, WHAT? One, Claude was only ever originally thought of as anything CLOSE to that; the """""promise""""" of him being anything other than what we got in 3H... never existed past the rough drafts. Like sorry-not-sorry to this fandom that insists so hard on making Claude way more morally dubious than he ever was in 3H, but Claude is for the most part a soft-hearted sucker. He was never half as bad as either he tried to say he was or the fandom ever treated him. And this is partially proven by even the eastern fandom being outraged at Hopes!Claude - the eastern fandom, who was never subject to Meme Man Claude portrayals of him! Like yes he can be underhanded, but the dude's just... nice, overall.

Two, if Claude was ever really someone who "played both sides" in 3H like this person said was """promised""" to us, then why doesn't he ever directly try to willingly help the Empire at any point in 3H? You know, like he does with helping the Kingdom cross Gloucester territory undisturbed, or how Claude gives Dimitri Failnaught, or how the Alliance lords willingly decided to fold back into the Kingdom, in AM? Even though the Empire, on CF, has Byleth to make them seem legit, and even though the Church would've still had the same dogma that Claudelgard insists they have that made him become an asshole?

Three - and I'm cupping my hands around my mouth for this one - A CHARACTER DOING BAD THINGS DOES NOT AUTOMATICALLY MEAN THEY'RE ON A CHARACTER ARC. Claudelgard is not on any "arc" - not on one that's any sort of competently written, at least. Him killing his brother and him saying he's willing to get his hands bloody afterwards does not, by ANY means, signify that that now means he's willing to COMPLETELY THROW AWAY ANY CHANCES HE HAS AT HIS AMBITIONS FOR BETTER FOREIGN RELATIONS, or that he's willing to believe someone he KNOWS to be a liar on just her word, or that he suddenly gives a shit about expanding his power (when THAT has NEVER been a concern of his, either in 3H or even in 3Hopes before that moment) to the point that's he's willing to help the Empire in any way in order to leech off their influence. Really wished that the people who like Claudelgard would stop throwing around the term "character arc" as some kind of gotcha against those who see the very clear breaks in Claude's character that needed to happen for him to do pretty much anything he does post Chapter 9.

And would, like, just stop being so rude in general actually?? Like, the amount of times I'm seeing say things like "the people who don't like Claude in hopes just don't like him making mistakes" "they flanderized his character and forgot that he can be bad too" "oh to be a Claude fan who knows how to read (<- ACTUALLY SAID)" is enough to make me wanna scream lmao, like holy shit

This got . . . long. Oops.

I'm not going to pretend I haven't said things similar to "they just don't understand"; I've said it about the Lions, and I've said it about Claude, because while it does feel gross to say (who am I, a little clown on her corner of the internet, to go after someone's interpretation of a game), after a certain point it's very clear that the text does not matter to certain consumers nearly as much as their own conceptions of the character, which is . . . irritating, to say the least. It's less about proving right and wrong, and more coming to the conclusion that being selective regarding canon is a consumer's choice, but after a certain point their interpretation cannot be taken seriously because of how little care they give the facts in the original media. Which is to say: People can enjoy this version of Claude if they want to, but I would heavily encourage a breakdown of what they enjoy, and if that's really something that was present in Houses or if it's just something they wished were there. Because people can holler until they're blue in the face about the character Claude could have been, should have been, would have been better as, but at the end of the day, I don't give a shit about the original draft of this game's writing beyond a cute little "huh, that's interesting," because it, frankly, does not matter. It can certainly provide a frame of reference to how they bastardized his character in Hopes; and if you were going to write an essay on how writers treat characters who don't fit into their franchise's usual tropes, and how that result interacts with their consumer base, sure, you could cite the original plans for Claude as a case study, in that he was going to be some sort of conniving middle ground between Blue Lord and Red Emperor--but from a narrative standpoint you cannot reach into the writers' hard drives and say "See! This was the plan all along!" because I think if someone did that to Princes I think I would fucking implode. Intention is not product; there is a reason drafts exist. If the writers really, honestly cared about giving us a morally loose character, they would have taken care to keep him that way instead of allowing his character to become one who's firm enough in his morals to trust the Blue Lord with the state of affairs--and his family heirloom!--while he fucks off back home. The writers made choices; Claude von Riegan, AKA Khalid somethingsomething (WHEN ARE WE GOING TO GET A FAMILY NAME, INTSYS?), is the result of those choices, and while he doesn't get to shine nearly as much as we all would have liked in Houses, he's sure as fuck consistent: He always has a backup plan, he doesn't take well to people using violence to get their way, he very much cares about those closest to him, and above all he treasures his ambitions and protects it with everything he has, without feeling the need to throw away his life. People are more than within their right to want something different but . . . oh well? Like I'm sorry, I really am, but that is not what we got. Frankly, that's what fanficiton is for.

And......I'm going to ask this in the most respectful manner I can, but:

What fucking character arc? Because Claude remains tragically one-note on Golden Wildfire. He's made to work for the plot, again, instead of having it go the other way around. That means he can never be confident in his plans, because the plot needs him to get to a certain point to make Decisions(TM); that means he has to throw aside common sense and his stance already established in this game to make an Alliance that makes absolutely no sense for his character, but it necessary for the plot for . . . *checks notes* reasons. There were no ups and downs for this Claude, because he was little more than a plot device instead of a full-fledged character.

The reality of it is: Claude in Hopes was poorly written, and he is by no means comparable to Claude in Houses as a means of saying what should have been. He's not even allowed to walk away with the title of smartest dude on the board because half of the decisions he makes are just straight-up idiotic. I can't look at this guy and cheer that this is the guy we were supposed to get because a) the guy we got in Houses was flawed without being insufferable, and b) you can't just undo a whole game's worth of canon because you want to. Hopes, as per the developers, is not meant to override Houses, which means they're meant to co-exist, and as we've established by this point, these two guys are . . . nothing alike. If people want to look at my takes and the takes of others and say we simply never understood Claude, or that we can't appreciate a scheme-y schemer . . . well, sorry, but no.