#sylvain will literally fight with him or die with him he does not care he will do it

[dimiclaudeblaigan]

still love this line, still love this line coming from sylvain, still love the fact that it is always sylvain who talks abt being at dimitri's side, still love the fact that he gets these lines and in every route in both games is actually shown doing what he preaches and always being at dimitri's side, sometimes literally.

[butwhatifidothis]

In Cap's fic, the word "love" appears about twice as often as "Bernadetta", "Linhardt", or "Caspar". He really doesn't care about the Black Eagles other than Edelgard and Hubert.

I'll do ya one better nonnie - compare that to the recruits, with particular attention given to Ingrid.

Combined, Caspar, Linhardt, and Bernadetta's total mentions of their names adds up to 793

Ingrid's total mentions, by herself, is 1,540

Three base BE students have a combined mention count that is literally barely over half of one recruit. And they barely beat out Sylvain's (746), Lysithea's (683) and Marianne's (620). Who all themselves at best barely reach half of Ingrid's mentions, with Sylvain likely only coming as close to half as he does simply because he's Ingrid's """""love interest""""" (cuz damn if he doesn't do ANYTHING in this fic except play meat shield lmao).

Hell, adding in Petra onto that first number, while raising it a good bit (up 532 mentions), that's still less than Ingrid's (1,540 vs 1,256).

And it's, like, it's one thing for someone like Woobiegard or Ficleth to have waaay more mentions than the rest - they're supposed to be the main characters of the story. But when half of your base roster can have a combined mention count that comes up to less than that of a singular recruited character's? When 3 base characters' combined counts can barely match that of all of the other recruits? Then at that point it... really, really doesn't feel like those characters are that important to the story, and that they're only there because the game has them be there.

Like, if you completely cut out Caspar and Linhardt from the story, you lose literally nothing. Like, genuinely. They only exist to Pair the Spares that are Kronya and Lysithea... who are shown having more "chemistry" (or whatever counts as that with this fic lmao) with each other than their boyfriends anyway. They contribute nothing to anything and are completely useless - they don't grow as characters, they don't aid in other characters' growth, they never progress the story, they add nothing to the theme or narrative, and they don't even show up enough to make up for all of that by at least being endearing. They are useless, in every way.

It's hard to remember that Linhardt fuckin' exists at all. Whohardt became a name for the notes for a reason - he rarely has speaking lines. 

If Caspar does anything, it's fuck up the themes of the fic - Woobiegard's meritocracy is good, but also Caspar is being given a position he is woefully unqualified for and didn't even ask for AND HADN'T EVEN KNOWN E X I S T E D all because a group of his friends came together and decided for him that he's best for the job. Choices??? Rising by one's own merits??? Why do that when your friends can make the choice for you to take up a position you are DAMN NEAR GUARANTEED TO BE SHIT AT?

Bernadetta, even when going by what the fic says, only ever did two things:

stand to the side and watch as Woobiegard tried to murder her friends, and she only did this because she saw Sylvain do it first and just followed his lead (or, as the fic likes to call it, "being brave")

pull Woobiegard, Ficleth, and Alois out of a fire... off screen. And while defying reality.

And once she does the latter thing she gets yeeted back into the void. 

And similar can be said for Petra, whose only purpose is to be ogled at for her strength and grace and beauty before she threatens her people with death for daring to fight for their freedom. 

And y'know, that kind of thing makes it really hard to believe that they're, like. As important as the fic wants us to think they are. Like, unironically, it'd be far more interesting if these characters were to die during one of Ficleth's many conveniently inconvenient times where she can't Divine Pulse it away - y'know, add some tension, let the reader at least possibly believe that these characters are actually risking their lives for something they believe in? But since CF has to be the bestest route ever in ever, that can't happen; they have to be happy and in love and totally living their best life, even as they do literally nothing. But once you notice how a character Cap'n actually cares for is written by him (see: Ingrid), you notice that these character, like... really are just decoration and nothing else.

And look at the tags for the fic:

Claude and Dimitri are listed as specifically important characters over Caspar, Bernadetta, Linhardt, and Petra - and Kronya too actually lmao. They’re just miscellaneous Black Eagle Students, as opposed to Hubert, Dorothea, and Ferdinand who get to actually be tagged (despite Ferdinand similarly being kinda useless). So much for being important to Woobiegard, I guess

[gautiear]

sylvain josé gautier, fire emblem 3 houses.

where do i even begin with this guy. he's a whore, hope that helps!

non binary but he does not care to unpack any of that. YET. someone give this dude some pronouns.... i can't do this only he/him shit

make no mistake, sylvain has no rizz. he is just very good at talking to people

if you think you can fix him, i promise that you cannot. you can, however, make him worse. whatever is wrong with him is funnier anyway

anyone else suffocated by societal pressures and the extremely heavy weight of expectations on your shoulders so you pretend to be an idiot himbo so that no one thinks twice about you?

guy that fights like he wants to die and will gladly take every single blow for the people he loves..... but is actually afraid of dying. AHHHH

apparently he can talk his way out of any situation. literally scary

holds all of his emotions inside until he snaps and then goes "haha sorry just kidding do you still think i'm hot"

this poor guy has had ptsd since he was a child and it's definitely not getting any better because he also hates himself. awesome.

"sylvain goes into his gender and sexuality class and asks the professor if its ok for him to be there with he/him pronouns" - willow

he's crazy and will do whatever he has to. that definitely includes killing people he cares about. you'd think he's all false flattery and silliness but There Is A Darkness brewing in him

GUIDELINES | APPLICATION | STATS | ISOLA

[dmclemblems]

Your takes genuinely appalled me to read. Just extremely callous readings of Edelgard, particularly that she "deserved" to be lobotimzed, and awful interpretations of Claude, the latter of which seemingly due to his expanded upon character not fitting the shipping mold you want to shove him into as Dimitri's arm candy. Depressing stuff to see those be anyone's takeaways from 3 Hopes, especially as a writer.

loooool imagine taking away all my issues with Claude's writing and motivation as "oh wow she just wants to make him Dimitri's arm candy".

first of all, nope! dimitri is HIS arm candy, get your facts straight because damn they're off.

anyway in seriousness, I don't really care what you think of how I feel about Edelgard. if she were real I would despise her the same way I despise the old fucker who started a war in real life and attacked another country to overthrow it. yeah, you know the one. that shit is still ongoing. that shit is disgusting and awful and I don't like war.

Edelgard prefers bloodshed to simply talking things out with people and that's been the case through and through. for her it's either submit to the Empire so the whole continent is under the Empire's flag or we go to war with you and kill all your people in power. not only do people who did nothing wrong and nothing to her die, but civilians take the brunt of the war. I cite: the entirety of two games.

let me get this straight for you: I despise Edelgard and everything she does and all the suffering she causes. she is not interesting to me and I think people who start wars, especially just because they want "change" are horrible people. you don't start a war for "change". she's in a privileged position of power and has the ability to start a war and ruin thousands of lives, and she does. the fact that she chooses bloodshed to "change the Crest system" is barbaric.

Sylvain is a perfect example of someone who hates the Crest system and is choosing peace above all else. even in Hopes, even with Sreng invading while they're at war with the Empire, he still insists on peace. he still jokes around with the Sreng commander. he doesn't want them to invade because he doesn't want them to cause harm, because then he does have to take up arms. he doesn't want to do that.

I hate Edelgard. What she does is horrendous. I wish bad things on people who do horrendous things. I wish the best for people who do good things, or people who don't do things at all. starting wars though and causing innocent people to suffer because you have beef with other people in power? fuck you then, because it's everyone else who suffers. also, she was not literally lobotomized. I used the term "essentially" because that's how it would appear, but it is not confirmed and we don't know her full state after the war. for all we know, the magic could be gone entirely and, as suggested in my following theory, she may be restarting her memories from around the age she was when she knew Dimitri as a child.

Claude can have an expanded upon character, but the fact that you dumbed everything I've ever said about him down to "arm candy" is pretty ridiculous and moronic. you see what you want to see and not what's been said. his character lost his curiosity and interest, is much more aggressive, and decided to attack Faerghus before talking things out. you talk to people before killing people (and yes, soldiers are, wouldn't ya know it, people!), not storm in, kill tons of people and then go "I just wanna talk!".

my issues with Claude extend to Faerghus, the Church, Cyril, his curiosity, his motivation, and his lack of understanding about Fodlan and basing his motivation on those understandings. me not liking the things he does has nothing to do with Dimitri in particular - especially considering that he makes it a point that he doesn't want to fight or kill Dimitri. he's also a snake though, and I hate that about him because that isn't Claude. the way he'll tell Dimitri to his face that he doesn't want to fight him, then turn around and talk to Edelgard and even make the suggestion that they team up to fight him when they get out of Zaharas or vice versa is ridiculous. it makes him two faced.

before anyone tries the whole "Claude sides with whoever is winning even in Houses" argument, no, he really doesn't. in every route he either:

sides with Faerghus (AM, and intended in VW) because they're not the aggressors, and even if they were both on the defensive, the two of them combined would help them avoid being on the losing side.

sides with the Church (VW, also AM because he sides with Faerghus in AM who is allied with the Church), who is also the losing side

runs away back to Almyra and does not side with Edelgard (SS)

loses to the Empire and returns to Almyra and does not assist Edelgard in any way, shape or form (CF, in contrast to AM where he returns to Almyra and gives his entire army, birthright and country to Dimitri/puts those things in Dimitri's hands out of trust)

is killed by the Empire (CF)

Claude does not just side with the winner. he does side with his morals though and what he feels is right or wrong. that's the biggest difference between him surviving in CF and in AM, or him allying with the Church in VW despite having some suspicions about it when he was younger.

in Hopes, none of those morals are present.

also, the issues Claude has in Hopes are just as ignorant as Edelgard's. oh no, how dare Rhea say there's to be no non-official contact outside of Fo- oh right, Lambert was trying to be friends with Sreng and Duscur for quite a long time now. oh right, Dimitri has been handling things with Duscur for a while now since he's taken the throne. oh right, Rhea opened the Academy to people of even foreign blood. oh right, an Almyran is in her care and she genuinely cares about him, his well being and his life.

oh right, Claude's entire motivation is based on sheer willful ignorance because he doesn't bother trying to learn what the truth is about what he's claiming to fight for.

oh and let's not forget that he/his army killed Matthias. all he really did was hurt Faerghus' efforts with Sreng because now it's an open invitation for them to invade and cause even more people to die on both sides.

I don't like the second half-ish of Hopes' Claude because I don't agree with how they handled him. they could have expanded upon him without the 180 in his character. they expanded upon him during the rest of the chapters prior to that and it was all just fine. the fact that he would be upset enough to get drunk over having to kill his brother was surprising but also more true to Houses' Claude's lack of aggression. despite that the man said horrendous things about Claude and wanted him dead, yet Claude still grieved for him should have said a lot about Claude. just because I don't agree with how he was written for the last chunk of chapters does not mean my "interpretations" are wrong. plenty of people have the same problems.

oh and let’s not forget the whole, Claude starting a war against Fodlan so they can “take it for themselves”. but I guess you prefer to ignore that because uwu you don’t like other people’s feelings about that.

this isn't even the whole of my issues with the way he was handled, but I'm not going to bother repeating everything or getting into it further because this is already longer than I wanted it to be.

I reeeally don't care if you're a writer. It doesn't change my opinions and it doesn't change how I see Edelgard's actions. Claude is at least a more in depth character, but I don't like how he was handled in Hopes. the fact that you would ignore that and act like I don't appreciate and care for Claude's character is enough to tell me how willfully ignorant you also are, because you don't know anything about me, my other posts about him, or how much I love in depth lore and details. just because I don't like the writing for Claude in Hopes specifically doesn't mean I just want to see him on Dimtiri's arm, like lmao bruh that's the stupidest take I ever did see from anything I've ever written and just your way of trying to hate on me because you don't like the limited things you've read. certainly sounds like you only even read that one post, which mind you was not tagged so strangers could read it and whine and moan. it was tagged for organizational purposes.

don't bother sending another ask and don't bother replying to this. I'm not here to argue with people. I'm here to do my own thing and post my own thoughts on my own blog. people can post their opinions but it doesn't mean you need to come in with your bitching and moaning. you could have just said in a polite way that you don't agree with my takes, but instead you came in with a huge attitude and going out of you way to insult me.

maybe look back at yourself and consider that attacking people over their opinions on fictional media is not only insanely fucking rude, but it makes you a pretty shitty person. the fact that you would hide your identity on anon and send hate to someone is appalling. depressing stuff to see your takeaways being so ignorant and simplified when I've clearly expressed so much more than just that post.

also, this goes for everyone and anyone. don't send people anon hate. don't act like you're better than anyone else because you disagree with their opinions.

also, imagine thinking because you're a writer that it makes your interpretations better than anyone else's lmfao. joke's on them though, I write things too. oh but I bet they'd ignore all the development I write for Claude and all his friendships because they think he's just Dimitri's arm candy (??? lmao what. the fact that this person even completely wiped out his whole character to say that, like lmfao bruh I'm not the one who said that, you did, anon. never in my life has that thought even crossed my mind, so... that one's 110 percent on you).

my takeaway from Hopes is a LOT more than just that post, and it is a LOT more than just about how Claude was written. depressing to think you'd even think that's the be all end all.

[faroreswinds]

Golden Wildfire - Final Chapter

IT’S OVER. I’M FREE

They are really thinking that Dimitri is just hoping Claude takes care of the Central Church for him. They are ASSUMING here.

Well, Claude is dumb, so I get it.

Hapi wonders if they can spare here. You can suggest she just go somewhere far away and never have contact with anyone to reduce her influence, which is pretty cruel too.

An NPC says they can’t let their guard down because some Central Church supports fled elsewhere besides the Kingdom. I see, so we are basically suggesting we hunt them now?

Petra says that Brigid doesn’t have any relationships with anyone other than the Church or the Empire. You can say that if Claude’s plan goes well, she had have relationships with the Kingdom and the Federation too. :/ If the Kingdom is still fucking standing after all this. PLUS, she admits Brigid is friends with the Church.

I guess apparently people were treating Linhardt like shit before because he was an Imperial. HMMM, I WONDER IF ITS BECAUSE HIS COUNTRY ATTACKED?!

“Hey I heard Catherine was a kingdom noble? Then they might hold a grudge” NO SHIT

Marianne thinks part of why Rhea might fight in the plains is to reestablish her authority Foldan like was Seiros did on the same battlefield. 

Gatekeeper - “I can’t wait till this war is over, then everyone can laugh together no matter where they are from!” No, I think the Kingdom is going to have something to say about it.

Yuri says that people are devout and so they won’t trust those who dispose of Rhea, even if the kings try to smooth things over. And he’s right

That NPC who says he is not a spy for Edelgard is 100% a spy

Ashe is worried for Dimitri, that something will happen to him if he lets the Church get sacrificed. 

An NPC wonders which Church will take control of the region if the Church is gone (maybe a Northern one, or the Western one)

We are still fighting Kingdom troops in the side chapters? Damn

Dimitri has ordered all citizens to evacuate to Sylvain’s territory. 

So, Dimitri can’t really spare troops to help the Central Church. Plus, the Central Church broke off themselves anyways. But Dimitri is willing to accept any punishment that comes is way for protecting his people

Also, what way did the Federation show... exactly? I’m not sure if I follow what lesson the Federation showed that will prevent the Southern Church from trying to force it’s rule

Cyril appears in a side map. :( So does Seteth and Flayn

I took Holst on another date and he says that replacing the academy will be difficult because it’s actually a really good fucking school

Holy fuck one of the side maps is literally attacking the Knights while they are trying to get rid of bandits, since they are “occupied”

OK, it’s time to end my suffering

We have barely seen Rhea this whole time

Rhea curses the fact she let the Elite bloodlines live (or, at least regrets it) 

Rhea is going to face them head on. She wants Flayn and Seteth to flee when the time comes

She knows she is going to die here. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6bfYqHcJPU&ab_channel=Jason

She says humanity is doomed to repeat their mistakes

Rhea can create soldiers through magic

Holy fuck Cyril is dead now

WHY does Mercedes just JOIN the other side after FIGHTING FOR the Church in the first place?! Cause Jeritza is there? Fuck off

There is a strategy called “rain of ash” That sounds like a good guy thing

“I’m not here to talk about who started the war” BRO

Rhea literally said she wasn’t looking for this fight, and that you spilt blood the war the EMPIRE started. 

And THAT was your response?!

Poor Rhea..... 

And after all that, it doesn’t seem like either the Empire or the Kingdom will accept Claude’s proposal to end the war

Claude

Fuck you

[raspberryranpo]

hey!!!!!! idk if request r open rn but!!!!!!! if they are, can i suggest first date hcs with the blue lion boys?? since theyre the only house you havent done?

their first dates with you

fire emblem three houses: blue lion boys

DUDE i have no idea what happened overnight but i woke up with like 60 notifications lmao

& thank you so much!! yes requests are open lolol

DIMITRI

not only would this be yours & dimitri’s first date.... but it would probably be dimitri’s first date EVER

he had no clue what you’d even do on a date so he had to resort to asking sylvain (but that didn’t go so well)

luckily he had mercedes and annette to turn to, and they just told him to be himself

which he didn’t quite understand but he just went with it

anyway..... he’d probably show up to your dorm with a boquet of flowers (lavender ones) but they’d probably be a bit crushed at the stems due to how nervous he was

but he’d hold them out to you anyway & apologise for his nervousness

dimitri’s face is definitely red for the whole day too

he was very desperate to hold your hand (since he’d seen sylvain doing it) but was afraid that he’d crush you

so he resorted to offering you his arm instead

he probably took you on a walk through the forest near the monastery

he wanted to use that opportunity to learn more about you, but it instead ended up being him telling you all about the different types of trees you could see

i bet he knows literally everything about trees and plants ok (thank dedue)

annette and mercedes gave him a little picnic to have with you & dimitri was very excited to show you the cute little sandwiches they made

he’d talk to you about something you’re very interested in (he did a lot of research) and then watch as you rambled on about something he has no idea about

he has the cutest look in his eyes, too full of love

throughout the entire day all he did was make sure you were smiling too, and he was constantly trying to make you laugh

he told a few jokes (probably about something actually really sad) but they didn’t go too well. you laughed anyway though

either way you had a really fun time, mostly because of how cute dimitri was being

DEDUE

dedue has also never been on a date

but he has more common sense than dimitri so obviously he doesn’t go to sylvain for advice

dates with dedue probably don’t go how dates are supposed to go - you guys just hang out together, maybe you kiss, maybe you just hold hands

you quietly sit in the greenhouse together, tending to dedue’s flowers

you’re probably one of the only people he lets touch his flowers, seeing as though he loves you a lot

it would be peaceful & quiet, and the only times either of you would speak would be when you’d ask about a certain flower, or when dedue would tell you about the plant he was looking after at the time

maybe after you both finish watering & weeding all the plants, you’d just sit there in comfortable silence, enjoying each other’s presence

i’m sure chef deddles (love chef deddles) would bring you a small sized version of whatever dish he was working on at the moment

or he’d bring you something he’d made up himself for you to try first

anything he makes or does, the first person he’d show is you

dedue brings a blanket or something to wrap around the two of you as you sit later on into the night

he worries that doing this is too boring, or it’s not a good enough first date

but you just have to reassure him that it’s nice & that you enjoy it :(:( he’s too anxious bless

as he’s walking you back to your dorm, he’ll gently take your hand & tell you that he’s had a very nice time

maybe he’ll just gently kiss your cheek, or if he’s not feeling that confident, he’ll just squeeze your hand & give you the gentlest smile

SYLVAIN

sylvain has been on many a date so he knows EXACTLY what he’s doing

he takes you to a cute little cafe in town

he wanted to take you to a restaurant at the start, but decided against it since he had no idea if you’d like that or not

but everyone likes a little cafe date... right?

since he’s actually bothered to formally ask you on a date & is serious about you, he’d probably bring you one or two of his favourite books

because we all know he’s actually a smarty pants

he’d hold your hand or have an arm wrapped around your waist on the way there, & he’d point out all the places he’s been kicked out of for flirting with the waitresses (or even the owner) because he knows you won’t judge him for that

anyway. when you get there, he insists on sitting on one of the couch chairs (or whatever they had in the 12th century) and at first you sit opposite each other

he likes it that way since you can both talk to each other face to face (and he can playfully tap your feet under the table)

the day is full of jokes & weird stories that sylvain has

somehow he’s met literally everyone and anyone and always has the most wack story for any situation

he also playfully flirts with you - it’s not serious (even though he means it) but it’s so cheesy it’s funny

after a while, when the cafe is quieter, sylvain comes and sits with you on your side of the table

he just wraps an arm around your shoulders using the old yawn & stretch trick

leaning over, you feel his lips on your cheek & he just whispers a little “thank you” for allowing him to have a real date

FELIX

felix is born different. he’s a different breed

he does not have any experience since he’s NEVER HAD A CRUSH. or so he says

and he’s too stubborn to ask anyone for help so he just does whatever he feels like

by that, i mean you guys definitely stay in the training hall for the entire day

if you accepted felix’s feelings you knew exactly what you were getting into, so deal with it

he forces you to spar with him for most of the day but he cares about you too much to overexert you

when you both take a break he sits really close to you for no particular reason other than to sit close to you

this is felix’s romance. sharing sweat (aw)

he also goes easy on you when you’re fencing

not that he thinks you’re incapable of fighting at his level, but that he just doesn’t want to accidentally stab you

sometimes he lets you win & really sarcastically says something like “aw, damn! you’ve won again...!” with this really soft smile on his face

only on the premise that nobody else is around

on the way back he won’t hold your hand or anything but he’ll constantly look back at you with the fondest look in his eyes

he probably looks down at your hands wishing he has the courage to actually hold them too

at the end of the day when he’s walked you all the way back to your dorm, he’ll very spontaneously kiss you right on the lips

he’ll have a very firm hold of your face but all of a sudden he’ll just let go & run off with his face bright red

sylvain probably saw and that’s why he left so suddenly looool

ASHE

i was going to say something stupid like ghost hunting but ashe would probably rather die

he’d probably just sit in the library with you and discuss books with you for a few hours, nothing too major

but ashe has a way with words & can tell old tales as though he was there (even if i’m remembering his character wrong, let’s just pretend)

you’d ask him about the book he’s currently reading & he’d tell you the plot of it (without spoiling it obviously) and the way he’d word it would make you want to pick it up immediately

the both of you just sit in the library quietly for hours, reading a book each

the only time either of you would talk would be when either one of you would laugh at something in your book & you’d have to explain the joke to the other

obviously ashe won’t allow either of you to stay up really late (no later than like 7) because the monastery gets dark at that point

and you know what comes out when the monastery gets dark?

absolutely nothing. but it’s funny seeing ashe scream at shadows so don’t say anything

i imagine that your first date goes so well, ashe forgets about the time & you both come out of the library at like 11:00

it’s a wonder seteth hasn’t found the two of you

anyway. your date actually turns out to be a ghost hunting trip (alternate title: ashe runs away from the ghosts while you laugh at him, and neither of you can see where your dorms are)

it’s fun anyway. well, not in ashe’s opinion

at some point you see this really big shadow that’s moving towards you and you both scream thinking it’s a really evil ghost

suddenly a torch is lit on the wall & turns out its seteth

“i knew i intimidate many students, but surely i don’t elicit a scream that loud!”

seteth quietly escorts the two of you back to the dorms and it’s really awkward

he eventually leaves you both alone & ashe sighs the biggest sigh of relief you’ve ever heard

he quietly thanks you and, with the most courage he’s ever had, he pecks your cheek & runs off

my first ask 🤪🤪 thank you so much!!! ah this was fun to write

requests are still open by the way!! for any of the fandoms on my rules page lolol

[fe-semi-decent-scenarios]

Congrats on 100 followers!!! If it's no bother could I request head cannons for how protective the BL group is over their s/o? Thanks :))

[I’m assuming that these are just general jealousy level / worry-wart head-cannons? We’re not tapping into yandere on this blog lol. I’ll keep it simple, how ya like it :3] 

Dimitri: 

11/10

Boy worries 

People out there want him dead = people out there want you dead too

Some might even try to take advantage of you due to his high status 

Makes him hella clingy sometimes. Nightmares when you’re in ‘unfavorable’ circumstances aren’t rare

Even in his emo phase he’s still like this- just even more because the world is basically his enemy 

Don’t let feral dima be around when soldiers talk smack to you. He will put them in their place without mercy 

Doesn’t help that you’re basically the closest to family he’s got aside from Dedue

Dude you’re his future and he knows it. There is no one else who would stick with him through everything like you do 

Even if there was, he wouldn’t want them. No one can ever replace you

He’s not so much concerned with someone else putting the moves on you 

Okay, wait--hold that thought 

He trusts you but goddess forbid someone makes you uncomfortable. He will use his authoritative presence to make them feel like a pebble next to a boulder 

Totally glares at anyone with wandering eyes when you’re not looking. He’ll put one arm around your waist and nudge you away from them without hesitation 

  Dedue: 

3/10

He can’t stop people from making advances- he knows that 

He also can’t take action on your behalf

Sure, he doesn’t like it when people make advances towards you. The whole point of being in a relationship is so people know that you are each other’s partner 

Most of the time he just lets you deal with it. You can take care of yourself 

His mood goes foul if people dare to do it in front of him. If people thought he looked intimidating before then d a m n 

He’ll casually place a hand on your shoulder (which if you know him well is actually the most unusual thing) and ask if you need anything else before dismissing himself 

Just a little expression of clarity that you’re with him, you know, chase the bugger off  

Surprisingly not a worry-wart in any aspect aside from health 

It’s easy for someone to neglect their health; mental and physical

Don’t be surprised if he encourages you to get check-ups ritually 

If something’s an issue he expects you to come to him when you’re ready

Not pushy in the slightest 

Felix: 

8/10

Asserts d o m i n a n c e towards all threats 

His attitude is one of the top three causes for any arguments. You know the snarky remarks are part of the Felix package, but would it kill him to have some restraint occasionally? 

Despite his intelligence Felix tends to make quick assumptions. The guy has a bit of a superiority complex and doesn’t like when other people get cozy with his s/o 

Pity the fool who challenges the Fraldarious 

He views it as them not taking him seriously. 

Also slightly afraid you’ll ditch his difficult ass

He can and will tell them off. Doesn’t matter the time or scene- if he feels someone’s being too buddy-buddy then he’ll make them to get lost 

Hence the arguments. It can get bothersome when he acts out towards someone you’re friends with or if he causes a scene 

He knows that it’s out of line and that you can make your own choices, but he can’t help it 

Will apologize begrudgingly, but only to you. The other person can just live with it 

You might be able to milk it and get an apology hug lol 

In other aspects of life he’s the same way. If a politician tries to screw you over he’s right there watching from the sidelines, if you’re in battle then he’s constantly glancing at where you’re stationed, etc. 

Ashe: 

7/10

He’s your silent protector lol

Not because he’s ‘quiet’ but instead out of fear. He doesn't want to annoy you 

Ashe has a lot of insecurities. No matter how many times you tell him otherwise he’ll always think you’re out of his league 

If anyone flirts or makes suggestive comments towards you he’ll get upset 

Like, really upset 

extremely upset 

 He’ll watch from the sidelines as you diffuse the situation, lacing one hand with your own with a smile. Just you’re normal not-confrontational-at-all-Ashe. At least that’s what you see 

On the inside it’s a raging storm of emotions going on. He’s so afraid that one day you’ll wake up and realize that he’s not good enough. That he’ll have to watch you walk away and return to an empty home again 

Que nervous sweating 

He becomes a doting mother if you’re ever ill or in danger. For weeks on end he’ll become you’re second shadow 

If someone ever dares to hurt you while he’s nearby they’re getting an arrow in the back. No mercy. The fury borderline snaps the arrow between his fingers 

Hates leaving you behind or being away. Not knowing if you’re safe, happy, healthy, etc. eats him up inside 

Literally fragile glass. He can’t even tinker with the thought of you dying or he gets a stress-induced headache 

Sylvain: 

5/10

He’s so neutral towards everything that it’s honestly scary 

The fellow Lions would even say ‘creepy’ for some occasions. It’s so far off from how he behaved towards his past partners and other friends 

With his past and reputation people would think he’d at least get defensive when other people flirt with you 

He knows what players are looking for since he was one. He’s been in their shoes

Yet??? He’s indifferent towards everything???

It takes a lot to get Sylvain worked up. His laid back way of approaching conflict tends to rub off on those around him and therefore helps in avoiding arguments 

It would take either you expressing your discomfort or for the other party to attempt physical contact to make him hostile 

Even then though he’ll simply push them back before leading you away. No harm no foul,  just in and out before things escalate 

When it comes to big decisions or outbreaks he also follows a neutral approach. He waits for you to express your own wants before giving his opinions 

You want to fight in the next battle? Cool, you’re registered. What battalion are you with? Well, looks like your going a different route than him. Are you sure that’s the one you want to follow? Yeah? Nothing he can do then aside from wish you luck. 

Doesn’t mean he won’t be concerned at all though. I mean, it’s natural to be. 

His mindset is that if he doesn’t worry then you won’t either. Anxiety is contagious and you don’t need extra stress in bad situations. 

Annette: 

7/10

She doesn’t w a n t to be like this, but sometimes it’s hard to hold back jealousy 

Annette is one of those people that likes attention from the person she cares about. It makes her happy, so being ignored for someone else would really hurt 

She’s nothing special in this regard. Like any person in a relationship she’ll have her moments, but for the most part everything is fine and dandy 

The whole reason she’s above average is because of other reasons

She’ll nag you about safety precautions with logic from her studies. Being a goodie-two-shoes from a young age has her nerves spiking whenever you take needless risks 

If she wasn’t reading up on faith magic before then she is now 

The fear of being left behind is also something to chalk up on this list. If you’re gone longer than expected she’ll become antsy 

The others can always tell when she’s worried. Annette isn’t very good at hiding that kind of aura from taking over 

All in all, she’s not a very protective person. A better term would probably be “anxious”

Mercedes: 

10/10

While she isn’t the staple of ‘overprotective,’ she is still exceedingly mindful of possible disasters  

Are you really surprised? Mercedes cares about everyone no matter who they are.  

She legit prays for the souls of her enemies. The woman is a saint in human skin

This also negates any jealous bone in her body. If she ever does feel uneasy it’s just a quick pang in the chest and then it’s gone 

She doesn’t like to dwell on ‘what ifs’ because then she can’t live in the present- where people need her  

She can seriously be a bit much other times though. If you even sneeze near her she’ll ask to take your temperature 

Doesn’t matter where, who, when, etc. Mercedes takes care of everyone 

Don’t ever deny her either. She can be pushy if the situation calls for it and sometimes it’s just easier to let her do what she wants 

She’ll pray to the goddess for your safety before any battle, and send you off with extra healing potions for the times she won’t be near 

During these times she’s extra vulnerable and is more open to showing her own personal strife to others. She tries to keep optimistic but nobody’s perfect. If it becomes too much she may seek to talk with a close friend (aka Annette) 

However, her thoughts remain unclouded when others are in need. She suppresses her personal feelings until those in front of her are taken care of 

Ingrid: 

0/10

She isn’t worried 

You know better than to wrong Ingrid 

Enemies know better than to wrong you 

Either happens and someone’s gonna die 

[pastelsapphy]

Why does Sylvian hates himself?

(This ended up being really long whoops)

*cracks knuckles* time to talk about my boy

[All quotes taken from the Fire Emblem Fandom Wiki, so there may be some slight inaccuracies]

Okay so first off Sylvain grew up in a shitty environment, to say the absolute least, and that fucks with your head.

First: his brother. He attempted to kill Sylvain on multiple occasions as kids because Sylvain had a Crest. And Sylvain just like, accepts that??? You can see that a lot in his A support with Byleth. He talked about being shoved in a well and being left on a mountain in winter by his brother, and almost immediately followed up with “I have no right to complain” because he, in theory, got lucky: he got the Crest.

And you figure, he would’ve grown up apologizing and made to feel guilty just for existing. You can see in his dialogue against Miklan, in chapter five:

Miklan: Hmph! Hurry up and die already. If not for you… If it hadn’t been for you…

Sylvain: Shut up! I’m so tired of hearing that. You’ve always blamed me for something that isn’t my fault.

He’s definitely been saying that since they were kids. That kinda stuff really fucks with your sense of self-worth after a while.

Then we have the rest of his family. We don’t hear anything about his mother, or much about his father, but we can infer some things about the latter: Margrave Gautier disowned, abandoned, and cast aside his first son in favor of the one with a Crest. Considering the dialogue about “everything being taken away” from Miklan, it’s possible that he was being raised to be the next Margrave, because someone had to inherit–with Crests becoming less common, who knows how long it would’ve taken to get a kid with one, if they got one at all? They needed a backup plan. And then Sylvain came along, with the minor Crest of Gautier, and suddenly Miklan didn’t exist. That’s fucked up, and it shows how little Margrave Gautier cared about his kids. I honestly doubt he showed Sylvain any kind of affection or attention growing up, and probably only interacted with him for inheritance- and Crest-related reasons. To him, Sylvain was a walking Crest, not a person (Sylvain’s fear of people only ever wanting him for his Crest, and not as a person in any respect, had to come from somewhere).

(And, if I can add a bit of an aside, I feel like this is the root of his philandering. Makes me think of the whole “even negative attention is better than nothing” kinda thing. You figure, Little Sylvain would have been incredibly touch-starved and desperate for attention. Humans are a social species and we literally need attention and affection to live well. I mean, he flirted with Ingrid’s grandmother when he was eight. I can only imagine what he said/did if Ingrid remembered it, considering she would have been five or six at the time. And kids that young don’t really know any better yet. Poor kid probably just wanted attention.)

(Additional aside that came to mind while writing this: I wonder if seeing the arrangement between Ingrid and Glenn affected this at all? Like yeah marriages in that kind of setting were purely political and such, but Ingrid was engaged to Glenn because (a) House Fraldarius was a powerful, well-to-do noble family and House Galatea really needed the resources, and (b) Ingrid was desirable as a wife because she had a Crest. Of course, we don’t know the exact circumstances of the arrangement, but we can infer from her other prospects. Sylvain still would have essentially seen Ingrid being used for leverage because of her Crest.)

So long before the events of the game, Sylvain is already pretty fucked up, emotionally. Trauma does that to you, especially when you have an “everyone else has it worse and I, actually, got lucky, so it doesn’t count and I’m not allowed to feel bad about it” complex. Survivor’s guilt is a hell of a drug lemme tell you. Sylvain has already internalized that,

He’s only good for his Crest

Any negative feelings about his Crest don’t matter, because those without have it worse.

No one will ever truly see him as a person–he’s just a Crest.

Already, that’s a pretty fucked up view of oneself.

By the time he gets to Garreg Mach, he has a carefully crafted persona set up: He’s an asshole, a liar, a serial flirt and cheater, dumb as a box of rocks, and a self-proclaimed “good-for-nothing.” In his B support with Dedue, you hear that people describe him as “indefensibly worthless,” which is followed by,

Sylvain: Indefensibly? Heh, that’s a bit harsh.

Dedue: I already knew your reputation concerning women. But these new rumors deprive you of all redemption. I did try to correct them. But I doubt I was believed.

Sylvain: Well, thank you all the same. Listen. You don’t need to worry what people think about me. As you well know, it’s not easy to correct misunderstandings or change people’s minds. And if I’m going to behave so badly, it seems misunderstandings are inevitable.

He doesn’t even argue, just kinda brushes it off and accepts that’s just How He Is (listen, Sylvain can definitely be an asshole at times, but I have to agree with that being harsh). He doesn’t want people to expect anything from him (well, not anything good). In his supports with Annette, he’s shown to be pretty smart, but admits he hides it because the pressure it puts on him is suffocating. He kinda goes out of his way to hide his more redeeming qualities like that. Also on that point, we have this bit from his B support with Ashe,

Sylvain: […] My advice on the whole thing is just to follow your instincts. That’s what I do. If someone’s in trouble, I help them. You don’t need to be a valiant knight to know that. Doesn’t matter if the person is an ugly old man or the cutest girl you’ve ever seen, you help ‘em.

Ashe: So, you’re saying…

Sylvain: Everybody’s the same, deep down. It’s our job to help anyone who needs it.

Ashe: Ah!

Sylvain: What? You’re looking at me funny. Did I say something wrong?

Ashe: No! No. I’m just surprised, that’s all. You’re actually a much better person than I thought.

“You’re actually a much better person than I thought.” Several of his supports have some variation of this line. Usually after he does something kind. And I mean, Sylvain is a kind person, under the philandering. Most of his supports involve him helping others out somehow.

He helps Dimitri with the girl situation (he kinda got him into it in the first place but I digress)

His whole C with Dedue is pretty much “racism is stupid and I’m going to be your friend, fuck what everyone else says.”

In his supports with Felix and Ashe, he helps them out in battle, at a detriment to himself (You can also throw Byleth in here, during their A support, but he was a jerk in their C and B).

In his Annette supports, she calls him out for going easy on her during training. He admits he was, but only because he didn’t want her to feel bad because she puts so much effort into her work while he “sorta gets by on [his] wits”

Okay I need to say how much I love his supports with Bernadetta???? He does genuinely try to compliment her work, and when he sees speaking to Bernie face-to-face won’t work, he goes out of his way to write a nice and well-worded review (a fairly lengthy one, according to Bernie) and compliment of her work–which Bernadetta takes to much better than she did talking in person. And this is one of the few supports where he doesn’t try to flirt. He’s just trying to give her genuine compliments on her writing and goes out of his way to do it without upsetting her.

His support with Hilda could go a few ways, but he did return the books for her and he did apparently get yelled at for something he didn’t do and didn’t even try to deflect that. And it seems that’s not even why he confronts her later: it’s because of how her actions were detrimental to other people (”And those books you left in your room for so long? Teachers and classmates needed those. So stop lying, and maybe stop being quite as selfish too.”). It’s not until she asks if the librarian said anything that he’s like “Oh, yeah, they yelled at me.”

And a fair amount of people still see him as “indefensibly worthless.” Sylvain often goes out of his way to help people, but he tends to brush it off and keep it lowkey.

I got a little off track here, but my point for this is Sylvain projects an outward appearance of being a really shitty, deplorable person. Almost everyone he has supports with is GENUINELY surprised when they realize that no, he’s not as bad as all the rumors about him imply. Sylvain just doesn’t really want people to know. And, as much as he plays it off like he doesn’t care, that kind thing gets to you after a while. So everyone except a handful of close friends seeing him in such a negative light? It filters in eventually, even if you’re not already emotionally fucked up.

Another thing I want to point out: A lot of times, it seems like Sylvain does not give a shit about what happens to him. A few of his support conversations involve him taking a blow in battle to protect someone else (and his attitude afterward is “better me than them”). Reading his A+ with Felix, “…protecting me like that. You’re so weak and yet you always… always…” this is definitely something Sylvain has a habit of doing. Additionally, we have one of his goal requests: “The best way to impress people is to save them by diving into harm’s way. That’s what a Great Knight does, yeah?” In true Sylvain style he covers it with “I just want to impress people” but he’s still devoting his training to being the guy who jumps in front of everyone else to tank the hit. Fully committing to that kind of thing takes more than just a shallow want to “impress people.” Then there’s his Monastery line to Byleth, toward the end of Verdant Wind I believe?, where he says he fights like he wants to die. Which…. yeah.

Another line of his that sticks with me: “burn until we meet again,” after defeating an enemy post-time skip. A friend of mine pointed out it might just be dramatic, but I think about that a lot. Does he think he’s going to the 3h equivalent of hell??? Does he think he’s that terrible of a person??

Uh this turned out to be a lot longer than i thought. So I guess to sum up:

Sylvain grew up internalizing the idea that he doesn’t have any worth as a person. Everything he is and has is related to his Crest. Everything that people feel towards him is related to his Crest and not who he is as a person.

He internalized the idea that because he has a Crest, that he’s not allowed to be upset about any of this, because he got lucky.

Growing up with Miklan’s abuse, he was definitely made to feel guilty about simply daring to exist. So he grows up hating himself.

He developed an outward persona that only reinforced these ideas–he makes and lets people believe he’s a piece of shit.

His attitude in battle shows how little he seems to care about himself.

tl;dr: Sylvain grew up without any love or affection, and was severely emotionally fucked up by his family, which complicated his relationships with other people and his view of himself as a person and his worth. He purposely projected an image of himself to support this, letting people believe he’s a shit person and doesn’t argue back because he feels it’s well-deserved. He doesn’t seem to think he’s actually worth anything. Sylvain, of course, like all people, has negative traits–that’s just part of being human. But his sense of self has been so warped and twisted over the years that he can’t seem to do anything but hate himself.

[nowis-scales]

Pre-Verdant Wind Endgame Update

An Update on the ol’ Three Houses Verdant Wind playthrough, since I’ve been neglecting documenting my journey properly for a bit:

• My current placement is Ch.20, so I’m only a few chapters away from the last one. It’s kind of a weird thought because I feel like I just hit the timeskip, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this will feel well-paced out. In terms of writing, I’m known for being a bit of a stickler for good flow. It’s why all of my fanfics take so long to update! I have to make sure my flow is perfect.

• The fact that they have been giving background information on characters has been so amazing. Learning that Raphael’s sister’s name was Maya and getting to hear about her has made me irrationally happy.

• Also, just generally, holy shit people sleep on Raphael and Leonie. Raphael often gets shoved to the side, and Leonie is treated like her only trait is liking Jeralt, and for me it all just culminates in the question of “so did you like... not do their support conversations, or...?” Seriously. I think Leonie might be one of my favourites in the game so far, and I adore Raph. He’s so sweet!

• The Flame Emperor reveal for some reason gave me “and I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids” vibes. I liked the venom Cherami Leigh had there as Rhea, too. I think I read from someone that in Japanese, Rhea’s actually super calm in that scene. I don’t think I have a preference towards the anger or the calmness, honestly. I think I just liked how smoothly the emotion came across. Plus, I’m a little biased, I’m fond of Cherami as an actress. I haven’t found a performance from her I haven’t enjoyed yet.

• I was really confused as to why Seteth showed up in my house after Chapter 12ish I think? I wasn’t expecting him to just be there after the paralogue, but I definitely wasn’t unhappy. I do like him! I just never use him, because I recruited Bernadetta and Sylvain, so I kinda have a full roster going... 

• I was also confused in the Gronder Field fight because I couldn’t see what people meant about Bernie getting set on fire. Then I remembered Bernie wasn’t on the hill because she was with me. I recruited her. Whatever this proves about me, I don’t know.

• I did end up beating Marianne’s paralogue! It actually wasn’t as hard once I levelled her up a bit and classed her to a Holy Knight. The big thing with her in that paralogue seems to be that she needs a decent amount of power and movement to really get by, so that’s what I’d recommend for anyone else playing it. Using rescue will also probably help you out, but I tried to avoid using Flayn there because it’s kinda easy to kill her. 

• Admittedly, I’m not 100% sure how I feel about the support system. In some ways, I think it’s better that not everybody has that forced S-Support. Oftentimes we were either squeezing a love confession out of two characters who were unlikely to have one, or characters with decent potential might get snubbed because their connection was less apparent to the writers (and unfortunately that still does happen in the case of same sex S-supports in 3H). Having the conversations only go to a certain point is helpful, but at the same time, the inherent romantic undertones of several of the A-supports do make things feel strange. If it weren’t for the fact that I know characters can have only one partner as their paired ending, I would think lots of them were in a polycule. Nothing wrong with that as long as everyone’s comfortable, but because I know they can only have one person in their ending, I find it pretty jarring.

• I think it was interesting that they went to do the fights for breaking into Enbarr and then taking down Edelgard back-to-back. I’m glad they did, honestly, because while I don’t usually like to do two fights next to each other unless I’m grinding, it doesn’t mess with the suspension of disbelief. It would be stupid to break into Enbarr and then just run right back to the Monastery.

• I have still not completed the randomized quest from just after the timeskip. You know, the one I was yelling about with the weeds? Still haven’t gotten any weeds. I think I might just have to give up on it. It’s hilarious that my luck is so good that it’s actually bad.

• The fact that Byleth is praised for having more of a personality than Corrin is the biggest slice of bullshit I have heard from this fanbase in a long time. Byleth is literally designed to be a silent protagonist with nothing going on with them – they even came up with a story reason for why Byleth is such a blank sack of meat! In the kindest way possible, I don’t think most people realize that they are implementing whatever personality they want onto Byleth. Personally, I don’t find anything relatable about being stoic, calm, and not inclined to anyone (until plot happens, of course). I’ve always been the overly enthusiastic and caring type, with a tendency towards nervousness. Trying to relate to Byleth was like trying to relate to the experiences of a cactus. While I definitely don’t think Corrin is the strongest of the modern FE avatars – that award goes to Robin – they still had some things I could understand and relate to. If you’re not the type of person who loves the cool, “I fight for my friends” types like Ike, though, you’re likely to have a hard time relating to Byleth. If you can manage that type of character, then you’re more likely to have present them with a personality of their own.

• Actually, while we’re on the topic of Byleth getting praised for things Corrin got dragged for, the fact that Corrin is still cited as the character who receives the most “player pandering” is ridiculous too. Do a lot of characters like Corrin? Yeah! But most of them who do are deeply traumatized in a way that inclines them specifically towards Corrin. The Nohr siblings cling to each other due to their abusive childhood, the Hoshido siblings all in some capacity seem to suffer from abandonment issues (oldest) and/or attachment issues (youngest), and the official foursome of retainers have also had some sort of abandonment struggle in their past (forced separation from parents, murdered loved ones). While the cast of Three Houses needs therapy and is traumatized too, there is no reason why the inclination moves towards Byleth. Bernadetta feels safe around them just because. Edelgard is obsessed with them just because. Marianne learns to feel better about herself just because. Why are there so many exceptions for Byleth, and so many just without explanation? I don’t hate Byleth by any means, but these two things make my opinion of them lower than it would be otherwise. It kinda sucks that my image of Byleth is tainted by the fanbase’s hypocrisy, but I know I can’t have everything.

• The gameplay overall for 3H has been pretty fun! I love the addition of the Demonic Beasts, as annoying as they are to fight. There’s a charm to having some of your stronger units working to take on the soldiers blocking the path, meanwhile your army’s more intermediate strikeforce works to keep them safe by bringing down the beast. Once you get the hang of it, gameplay with the new additions is fun. The only thing I don’t use is Divine Pulse, but that’s because I’m on Casual and usually when I want to rewind, I want to just plain start over. So I use the old “turn off and start again” trick.

• Edelgard’s death scene was actually pretty good. I must confess that I went out of my way to avoid Edelgard in the academy phase, as I knew how hard the game was going to hit me with the “she’s obessed with you” thing and I wanted to see how wonky it would feel if I didn’t speak to her much. I was right that it’s incredibly awkward in terms of writing when you haven’t spent the time with her, but surprisingly, her death scene still holds up. Good voice acting, animation, and music. My only beef with it is something they have done in FE before, and it’s something I wish they’d stop. If a character is dying, you either let them have a few last breaths after their last lines or you kill them mid-sentence. It’s probably just a personal nitpick, but hearing them get their last word out without struggle and then immediately die just makes me aware of how badly the directors wanted the whole line to be in there. I can totally understand it but I find it so troublesome in the grand scheme of things that I just can’t.

• I also like that in the fight against Edelgard, they tried to make it ambiguous who had the key. Immediately as it told me that, I decided it was Petra and ended up being right. I was kind of sad to kill her though, to be honest. I don’t know her well, but she’s probably one of the Eagles I like more.

• The fight against the Death Knight at Fort Merceus ended up being surprisingly pretty easy. In fact, while I paved the way for most of my army, Nader ended up making it to the Death Knight just as Claude did. He did most of the damage – I’m not kidding, the Death Knight was down to 1 HP – and then Claude took care of the rest. It was a weird fight. They said impregnable a lot leading up to it.

• I understand why they kill Dimitri off-screen at the Gronder Field fight, but I was admittedly a bit disappointed. Again, Salli Saffoti does a good job doing Hilda’s voice for it, but I would have liked to see it animated. It was also nice to have that little rapport with Dedue! If only we could have allied with the Lions a bit more. Everyone always says Claude and Edelgard have similar goals; however, it’s their methods that differ. Claude seems to align himself a bit closer to Dimitri, so I’m usually a bit confused by the idea that Edelgard and Claude would work together. I was spoiled on enough to know her background and story, and even so, I think that her methodology is just a bit too violent for his tastes. But that’s just my two cents.

 Alright. I think that’s about all I can drain out of my brain from the top of my head. With that, I am off to kill the slithers! We’ll see how this goes. Wish me luck!

[nekomas-kuroo]

Hey! I saw those fire emblem hc's you did before. I was wondering if you could do the garreg mach headcanons for Kenma, Bokuto, Hinata, and Akaashi.

i’ve been staring at this forever cause kenma’s an enigma to me but honestly all of them are

masterlist

kozume kenma

okay i can honestly see kenma in the black eagles just cause he grew up in the empire

he doesn’t really care too much about the whole system in general

this boy is DEFINITELY a magic user. like a kickass gremory

he gets AMAZING grades without having to think about it at all

i can absolutely see him being friends with Lindhardt, Bernadetta, or Marianne. maybe even Ashe. they’d definitely have to reach out to him first, but he does care deeply for his friends

around the monastery he’d definitely be just kinda hanging out doing his own thing anywhere. mostly in the library

you can occasionally find him outside playing with cats

after the timeskip, he’s relatively the same. he’s where he is because of his circumstances. it breaks his heart to ever fight against people who he considered friends. but he’s analytical, and definitely doesn’t like to lose.

bokuto koutarou

golden deer hands down he’s gonna be causing some trouble with them

Claude may come up with the plan, but bokuto is definitely the one who would go in and help execute it

i can see him using an axe, but also being a brawler did someone say beefy bokuto?

his grades are atrocious but somehow he still passes things? he’s definitely one of those units who’s good at like 2 specific things and that’s it

he’s friends with EVERYONE but specifically gets along best with maybe Caspar or even Sylvain? I can also see ferdinand or hilda in there too

he’s either in the dining hall or at the training grounds and there’s literally no inbetween

after the skip, he’s hurt. he’s lost a lot of people he was close to, and he’s just fighting to get that back. he knows there’s no way at this point, but he’ll be damned if he doesn’t die trying

hinata shoyo

hinata would also be in golden deer!

he’s definitely one to be sweet and meaning well but definitely gets dragged into their schemes

i could definitely see him aspiring to be one of those classic sword users. but also maybe using some faith here and there?

he tries really hard in training and is actually great! but usually his grades suffer because of this

100% friends with everyone. he’s so sweet to everyone, admires them all, but there are definitely some who can’t stand him

he’s particularly close with ignatz, ashe, bernadetta, and flayn

he’s always in places where he can talk to people easiest. whether it be the gardens, the marketplace, the reception hall, he’s where he can be around people

post time skip, he’s a bit lost. he loved everyone, and doesn’t understand how any of this could have happen. sometimes he’s driven by anger, especially if you’re someone who took that happy time away from him

akaashi keiji

akaashi would absolutely be a blue lion

he’s got those responsible vibes that dimitri ingrid and mercedes give off

he’s a lance user and i would die for pegasus knight akaashi

he’s a great student and felix CONSTANTLY wants to spar with him cause he can actually keep up

he’s friends with dimitri and ingrid, but i can also see him begrudgingly being friends with sylvain too

sylvain is kinda like his bokuto

he’s usually in the blue lion’s classroom or the courtyard just kinda doing his own thing

after the time skip, he’s definitely colder. he was a bit more serious before, but everyone swears they haven’t seen him smile in years. he’s ruthless, calculated, and damn good with a spear

[crackimagines]

Remember the child!byleth post with the Deer defending him? Can we see a version of the eagles and dimitri? (Why I put dimitri specifically is because he wouldn't give the lions a chance to beat the bandit up.)

Child!Byleth Post Masterlist here!

Same premise as the Golden Deer, which is here!

—–

HOW MANY TIMES DO WE HAVE TO TEACH YOU THIS LESSON, OLD MAN?!

Thanks for the ask, redwing555 and anon! I hope you enjoy!

—–

Black Eagles & Blue Lions defending injured Child!Byleth HC’s

—–

Black Eagles 

Edelgard - FULL MAMA BEAR MODE, SHE IS GOING TO CLEAVE THAT BASTARD IN H A L F.

She is then going to get a medic to them, and any poor bastard that even goes near her while she’s defending him, she will kill them without even a second of hesitation.

Hubert - 

Your ass is being sent to the shadow realm for even THINKING of the idea. As for the poor bastard who did it, Hubert makes sure to use his most painful spell he has, and watches in pleasure as they explode into chunks, getting his tiny professor out of harm’s way.

Ferdinand - HE IS ANGRY FERDINAND VON AEGIR

That lance he has? It’s going straight down your throat. No matter the injury, he is GOING to shield Byleth, and absolutely NOTHING will be getting through him.

Caspar - Whoever did it, it’s being punched to death, Jojo style. He’s going to protect his professor by absolutely annihilating everything in a 50 mile radius. After all, no one can harm the professor if there IS no one to harm him.

Dorothea - She doesn’t get angry that easily, but boy does this put a frown on her face.

She is going to drop a meteor on the asshole who caused the injury, and she is going to literally dance on your corpse, summoning more magic to completely crush everything. SHE WILL KILL YOU ALL BY THE POWER OF MAGIC AND DANCE FOR HARMING THE TINY PROFESSOR

Bernadetta - Remember that scene from 300 where there’s like thousands of arrows descending on a dude?

It’s this scene, but with Bernadetta screeching the entire time, as she orders her entire company to pelt everything with arrows once she drags her professor out of the kill zone. Your reward for hurting her little professor? ARROWS IN YOUR EVERYWHERE

Linhardt - This sleepy boy has turned into a very angry boy

He may not like bloodshed, but is he gonna turn your ass into ashes with so many spells that’s going to be firing at him. Even though he falls asleep during his lectures, no one, NO ONE gets to hurt someone he cares about.

Petra - “I see. It is the murder time.” 

She engages her hunter mode and starts gutting every last bastard in the vicinity of her professor. 

She’s tempted to take trophies, but that’s a bit overkill. More importantly, she had to focus on keeping him safe. Plus she wasn’t sure if he’d appreciate heads mounted in his walls.

Blue Lions

Dimitri - Every single enemy is going to be torn limb from limb. 

NO MERCY 

NO RESPITE

KILL EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM, MAKE THEM BEG FOR MERCY AND RIP OUT THEIR ENTRAILS

Mercedes - “IF THE GODDESS HAD WANTED YOU TO LIVE, SHE WOULD NOT HAVE CREATED ME!”

She may be a holy woman, but in the name of the lord goddess, SHE IS GOING TO RIP YOUR HEART OUT WITH HER BARE HANDS

After absolutely murdering the bastard, she is going to dedicate her entire power to healing her tiny professor.

Annette - While Mercedes is focusing on healing, she will take over her wrath, and shred/burn/freeze ANYTHING that even looks at them.

“HOW DARE YOU HURT MY LITTLE BROTHER!”

“…Wait, you guys are sibling-”

“DIE”

Felix - “HE DOESN’T DIE UNTIL I BEAT HIM!”

He says that, but he’ll make sure his tiny professor would never actually face death in combat. Felix goes on a rampage on anything that moves until he gets into a defensive stance, getting Byleth to safety.

Sylvain - He will use his entire body to shield him from any further attacks, and throwing spears nonstop at anyone that even thinks of coming near.

HE IS THE PROFESSOR’S WALL, AND YOU WILL GET FUCKING CRUSHED FOR APPROACHING

Ingrid - She is going to divebomb everything with her Pegasus once she grabs him and gets to safety. She’ll attack so fast you won’t even know what happened.

“Where did that brat go?!…Where did my arms go?!”

Dedue - THE WALL

Nothing further is going to attack them because Dedue will TANK THAT SHIT

If anyone even comes close, he is going to actually turn them into a pancake with his muscles alone. 

Ashe - This pure boy is going to be the angriest anyone’s ever seen him since fighting the Western Church 

Nothing is spared from his arrow spam, shooting shots over walls, sniping enemies from a mile away, NOWHERE IS SAFE

HE’S GOT YOU IN HIS SIGHTS, AND HE’S P I S S E D 

[butwhatifidothis]

Honestly coupling the gross mischaracterization and captain's frankly disgusting minimization of his abuse and trauma, Sylvain got such a raw deal in this fic. But he needed to pick up one or two characters from each house to prove how perfect and amazing and understanding Woobiegard is and how she'll totally fix what the other lords can't! Just don't think too deeply how Captain has more sympathy for a rapist who abused his brother than his victim.

Yeah it’s like, does Cap’n like... not realize that he has Edelgard sympathize more with Miklan than with Sylvain? Miklan, who has - both canonically and in his own fic - sexually assaults women and kills people, both with no remorse? And that he does this all because he didn’t get to inherent House Gautier’s head title - y’know, escaping from inheriting damn near any responsibility and getting a literal golden ticket to life? Like oh boo hoo, daddy Gautier went with one unfair inheritance system instead of another arguably more unfair inheritance system, poor poor Miklan, his life was so bad he just had to try to murder his little kid brother multiple times in slow, torturous ways (freezing and/or starvation, yeah also known as The Fastest Ways To Die amiright guys) and he just had to sexually assault women and he just had to murder people - such a poor victim guys!

Like, Sylvain’s complicated relationship with Miklan where he both hates him and “sees why” he did all he did makes sense, in a “this is a victim struggling to cope with the fact that their abuser was supposed to protect and love them” sort of way, but Edelgard doing so without that context on her just makes her seem fuckin’ terrible. She full on derides Sylvain for his imperfect behavior during the mission where his brother is going to be killed and makes his suffering all about her and Ingrid, while bending over backwards trying to make Miklan into a poor hapless victim. Edelgard compares Sylvain to Miklan when he gets rightfully angry at her accusing him of being a voyeuristic, two-faced liar who doesn’t care for his friends and then has the gall to say that she respects him. She has brought up Miklan multiple times after the Miklan chapters as an example of Rhea’s horrible system when, again, Miklan’s life would have been the literal dream had he not been a selfish, shitty person.

And it’s like you said - this is all to get a couple people from each house to show off how great and perfect Edelgard would be for all of Fodlan. Being brutally honest, Sylvain feels like a token male whose only purpose is to be thrown at Ingrid so that she can have a love interest. He barely has a presence otherwise. Knowing that his biggest impacts in the fic so far are “getting mocked for reacting wrong to his brother’s execution order” and “sitting off to the side as his friends and love interest fight for their lives” is more than a bit annoying

[koganeirou]

me before playing blue lions: haha I’m not like ~other girls~ I don’t like Dimitri and I think he’s boring and basic.

me after playing blue lions: I will die for Dimitri.

I finally finished Azure Moon!! Can’t believe it took me 4 damn months to finish this route. Just like with Crimson Flower, I decided to do a very long write up of my thoughts of this route after letting my thoughts marinate for a bit. There will be spoilers for both Azure Moon and Crimson Flower. Also disclaimer: these are just my personal opinions.

Tldr: this route was so fucking good!!!! I jumped ship from being team Edie/BE to team Dimitri/BL faster than Sylvain jumps girlfriends because I enjoyed this route more than Crimson Flower in almost every way possible. The Blue Lions are my KIDS and I will die for each and every one of them. Blue Lions may not be my first route/house, but this is where my heart rightfully lies. 

I guess the first thing I should get out of the way are the negatives. While this isn’t really a complaint about AM specifically and more so the narrative over the entire game... the conflict between Edelgard and Dimitri seems really stupid and contrived. In other games, war happens because the villain is evil. In this game, war happens because the villain is fucking stupid. Basically, I still ain’t convinced that Edelgard’s war was ever necessary LMAO. She straight up nuked the church’s authority and relevancy out of orbit the chapter before the time skip, so she technically already accomplished her goal; why she still feels the need to go on a savage conquest alludes me. 

Speaking of nuking the church’s relevancy out of orbit, that’s exactly what happened to Rhea LOL. Despite all the church goons clamoring every .5 seconds about how they gotta save Rhea, we literally never see her again at all after the time skip, even at the end of the game. It makes no sense why Edelgard would keep Rhea imprisoned and not kill her, especially when Rhea seemingly served no greater purpose to Edelgard and became completely irrelevant in the war phase.

Edie says some mumbo jumbo of “I weighed the victims of this war against the victims of the world and I deem that there will be less victims of war” like bitch, how??? How do you tangibly quantify “victims of this world”. If she means “people who had a shitty life because of shitty society”, then those people are always going to exist because every society has its flaws. Even if you change society, you aren’t decreasing that number because you’re only solving problems by creating new ones (Edelgard’s specialty). Also the mental gymnastics you have to do to be tortured by an evil organization only to team up with said evil organization to take down another organization that, unless I missed something, isn’t even directly responsible for the death of all your siblings??? In both CF and AM, Edelgard comes off as incredibly thoughtless and illogical in her actions and I can’t help but feel that if she had been just a little bit more diplomatic, then maybe, just maybe, she could have found a better solution without starting a bloody war.

This brings me to the god forsaken chat between Edelgard and Dimitri. Dimitri demanding to know why Edelgard started the war only for her to go “it was the only way” has about the same narrative weight as “Riku why did you become one with the darkness?!” “Because I’m the worst”. Instead of bitching about whose ~ideals~ are better, how about y’all sit down and actually discuss what each person wants to accomplish and maybe figure out a way to accomplish these goals without murdering each other over it? Not that I think Edelgard would accept anything BUT murder, but jesus, this is why you don’t leave diplomatic matters to actual children.

Speaking of why you don’t leave diplomatic matters to children, god that Gronder battle. I get that it’s supposed to be an epic showdown between the three houses that mirrored the mock battle pre time skip but... the Kingdom had literally NO reason to fight the Alliance!!! The reasons they provided to justify why the Kingdom and Alliance couldn’t team up at Gronder was so fucking dumb, especially when two chapters down the line, Claude is knocking at our door begging for help. I will say tho, I never knew how much I appreciated himbo in distress Claude until now lmao.

Rodrigue's death was also really poorly done imo. As much as I liked having Dimitri’s father figure be the one to snap him out of his insanity, (I love found father/son relationships...) how on earth are you guys so fucking incompetent that you let this tiny little girl kill Rodrigue??? It doesn’t help that the exact same thing happened with Jeralt and Monica. This... just ain’t it, chief. 

I think the biggest bone I have to pick at AM specifically is... so what the fuck is the truth behind the Tragedy of Duscur LMAO??? They literally blue balled me by dropping the bomb of “Dimitri’s step mom may have conspired in it” ONLY TO NOT DO ANYTHING WITH IT. I assume that the full truth behind the Duscur tragedy will probably be revealed in VW (I hope) because it involves the slithers but it’s highkey ridiculous that the BL goons... never actually find out what really happened, and why. And I get that the story is about them moving on from their trauma and the past, but they should have at least figured out the actual truth behind it so they can get the closure they deserve???

Despite the gripes I have with some of the writing, unless VW or SS is mind blowingly amazing, this route will easily stand as the best route for me, because.... it is kind of is mind blowingly amazing. I wholeheartedly love character driven stories, and this route absolutely delivers in that respect-- the character writing is amazing and is essentially the heart of this story. To think Dimitri and the Blue Lions were the lord/house I was least interested in at first. Even after hearing people talk about what the BL goons and Dimitri’s character arc was roughly about, I was still blown away by just how damn fucking good it was, and this route exceeded my expectations in every way possible. 

When playing CF, I struggled to connect with a lot of the beagles; I didn’t have that problem at all with the BL goons and the route does a phenomenal job at making me actually give a shit about these characters and their problems. Childhood friend squad (+Marianne and Ashe) are easily my favourite characters in this game by a landslide, and the dynamic between not only the childhood friend squad, but all the BL goons, was just so, so amazing. Watching these characters that are seemingly joined by a single tragedy, rise above all their suffering as they grow, heal, and overcome hardship together is just so... MY KIDS... MY HEART..... I really got the sense of not only their shared pain, but also shared intimacy, care, and friendship. Their support conversations with each other had everything; from goofy and fun, to soothing and nurturing, to painful and harrowing. 

The connections that the BL goons have to the pre time skip missions gave part 1 story so much more meaning, and it only gets better after the time skip. I really appreciate that the BL bean boys actually feel relevant to the main story, and that their input and opinions actually mattered. The cast’s struggle to come to a consensus on the best course of action during the war phase made them feel like actual people with opinions, unlike in CF, where everyone was just a mindless passenger to Edie’s not so merry joyride. This also made Dimitri’s arc way more impactful because the narrative actually holds him accountable for the consequences that his behavior/poor decisions had on others. What I also really liked about the war phase is that you could just feel how war torn the kingdom was and how much everything went to shit after the time skip. I felt really strongly to the characters’ sense of hopelessness at fighting a losing battle as they struggled to keep their home land in tact while everything just kept spiraling out of control and deteriorating further. 

So to see the BL goon beans slowly, one battle at a time, turn the tide of the war and push back against the corner they were backed in, was SO fulfilling and rewarding. The battle of Fhirdiad is probably my favourite battle in the entire game because it felt like all the suffering and toiling that the BL goons went through was finally worth it, and just watching the kingdom slowly heal after being liberated was just such a good feeling. This kind of payoff is something I think CF sorely lacked, since tbh, I struggled to celebrate Edie’s victories with her. Though I do appreciate how Edie’s a much more threatening antagonistic force than either Dimitri or Rhea were in CF too bad Edelgard’s boss battle was pathetically easy and Dimitri shredded through her armor like swiss cheese... at least Rhea put up a slightly challenging fight.

I could gush about the characters all day, but Dimitri? He makes this game, 100%. This truly felt like his story and he was the star of this route. On a superficial level, I’m a basic bitch as well as a slut for angsty boys who have trouble talking about their trauma because I want them to rail me. I fucking loved his feral personality it was just so fun to watch and interact with LMAO 10/10 would let him use me until the flesh falls from my bones. His dialogue in this state is just so demeaning, belittling and raw that it somehow comes a full circle and becomes charming I promise I’m not a sick masochist.

I’m also a degenerate and dimileth is my otp. The way the relationship between Dimitri and Byleth develops over the game truly felt like a bond forged over time. The way Dimitri admits that he couldn’t trust Byleth at first because he was put off by the way they could “kill without batting an eye”, to being so elated when he sees them smile for the first time that he’s completely mesmerized when they starts expressing emotion... oof, talk about otp material. I think what really sold me is the way he’s their anchor after Jeralt’s death; their emotional support both in a traditional sense, but also in a darker sense when he declares he will kill anyone so they desire it because their enemies are his enemies. Character A declaring they’d die for character B? Soft shit. Character A declaring they’d kill for character B? A+ romance right there, boys. 

On a non superficial level, Dimitri’s character arc of his fall from grace and subsequent redemption was absolutely phenomenal. Just seeing how far he sinks, how far he goes, only to see how far he climbs his way back up after hitting rock bottom, was such a roller coaster and I loved every minute of it. I also probably like revenge stories more than I care to admit. Dimitri has everything; blood lust, cruelty, obsession, but also empathy and compassion so extreme that it’s his very own innate kindness that drives him into insanity, which is what makes him such a compelling character in my eyes. The extremity of his psychosis was absolutely heart breaking, but despite everything, him making the conscious decision to change for the better and rise up to fulfill his role as king was just astounding to watch. 

I will say though... maybe I have a screwed up moral compass but tbh Dimitri brutally killing imperial soldires didn’t really upset me because... this is war??? That he didn’t even start?? Everyone is killing everyone??? Even if he never went feral, he’d still be killing because his bloody kingdom is being invaded?????? But I digress.

While I think just how damn avoidable everything was kind of detracts from the tragedy of his relationship with Edelgard, I still really loved how steadfast and unconditional his love for her was (after he stops going feral), and you can tell just how much she meant to him every time he spoke of her. I also love how the dagger kind of becomes a symbolic motif throughout the story, and Edie throwing the dagger at him in the final cutscene as a sign of her wholehearted rejection of him was just fucking depressing, but also very fitting of her character. 

I adore the whole overarching narrative and themes surrounding grief and death, befitting of a war game. How, as tempting as it is to constantly keep the memory of the dead alive, there comes a point where you have to move on and not let your life be ruled by those no longer around. The way that the characters react to the death of loved ones and grieve so differently was a huge highlight of the BL squad’s characterizations, which just makes them feel more alive and human. Honestly, no words can really describe just how incredible of an experience Azure Moon was.

Anyway my order from favourite to least favourite BL goon bean boys are: Dimitri > Ashe >/= Sylvain >/= Felix > Ingrid > Mercedes > Annette > Dedue. (I love Ashe/Sylvain/Felix almost equally LOL)

tldr my experience with Azure Moon:

tfw my second best girl is childhood friends with all the best boys in the entIRE GAME and she settles for a guy with a dead wife, daughter, and most likely triple her age :|.

I’ll be finally playing Golden Deer next, which I’m gonna do on NG+ Maddening so.... hope that goes well!!

[dmclemblems]

Claude calling the people of the Kingdom and Empire monsters and rallying people under the promise of their deaths and only giving half of a shit for his own people, on top of being willing to worsen foreign relations and refuel fighting on the border wrt Sreng for the same reasons. Hm wow that sure sound like someone who sees outsiders as less than human and only as threats to his own people (who are the only ones deserving of peace and safety). You know, that mindset that Claude fundamentally hates and literally came to Fodlan to wipe out so that people can live in harmony with each other?

Fuck this game and the absolutely horrific treatment it gave to Claude's entire character. Literally nothing anyone says can possibly explain why such a core aspect of Claude's character is not just not present, but actively replaced with its perfect opposite - and this game doesn't even bother to give a HALF-HEARTED explanation, he Just Is like this now. This game can actually suck my ass.

I like the game generally speaking (and AG was written really well), but I'm definitely not fond of how Claude was handled.

Like you said, and one of the biggest things that bothers me that I mentioned in another post is how he basically tells people to surrender or die, yet he says he wants to minimize casualties. It doesn't even make sense that he wants that but attacked the Kingdom without so much as a letter being sent to speak to Dimitri personally talk to to him about the Church and whatnot. Plus, if he did, he might have been made aware that all his perceptions of the Church were wrong.

The whole Sreng thing bugs me because they informed Sreng about the war and whatnot so that they'd invade, but later Claude tries to... not get them involved? He used them when it was convenient and then suddenly didn't want to after that.

One of my biggest gripes is that Claude has no consistency. You know how in CF they kept doing this back and forth trying to be like Edelgard is a bad person who started the war, oh wait no she's just a good person with strong views, etc etc? They really did that with Claude here except at least Edelgard was always consistent with her character. Claude's writing here is just like... they're trying to make him the anti-war person he is in Houses but they wrote him to be the exact opposite. When it starts going too far they pull him back again and have him keep iterating this nonsense about not wanting the war to keep going because people are dying.

Also, Nader saying he couldn't wait to rampage in the Kingdom REALLY bothered me (and he says this at camp so it's missable if he wasn't spoken to). After all the shit they said about Almyrans not being barbarians and whatnot, he's planning to go nuts with attacking the Kingdom? All that would do is make the Kingdom more unwilling to make any kind of relationship with Almyra.

There was definitely a lot of "we're doing this for Leicester" and not... any bit of care for any other land. I've been goofing about it a lot and trying to be mellow about it but just in general I find the things Claude does and the things he says to be absolutely abhorrent in this game. The way he manipulates people with the politely worded "surrender or die" is seriously awful and isn't much better than Edelgard's behavior.

I really doubt there would be any true harmony after this war. Even if the Kingdom lost and ceased to exist (and became just Adrestia and Leicester), I can guarantee there would be civil wars and uprisings all over the place. The people in the Kingdom would never, ever settle for that. Honestly, I could see Sylvain rallying troops and launching an attack on Leicester. I feel like even though he acts mostly calm during the story, he still has that in him because of the way Dimitri didn't want his emotions to get the better of him in battle. It's pretty clear to me that Sylvain despises Claude and the Alliance in GW.

Literally the whole thing with the Kingdom just sits so wrong with me. They were just minding their own business and suddenly everyone is trying to invade. In fact, they're trying to do good things within their borders and fix their society, but they can't because everyone around them just wants to go to war. Even the Church kind of forced them to get involved by asking for their aid. I'd put the least blame on them honestly because they really don't do anything bad at all here/in this game, but the war forced Dimitri's hand in so many ways when all he wanted to do was make a better society for the Kingdom.

By the end of the game I'd say Claude is really just... marginally better than Shahid, and that is not a high bar. It just served to keep the theme going that Almyrans just want war and fighting. Claude had other options and he chose invasion and killing. He chose to do what Shahid did to Leicester.

I honestly feel really bad for the Kingdom. Nobody will leave them alone and the worst part is that they're all so loyal to each other and so tight knit that like... once you've fucked with one of them you've fucked with all of them. They're not just gonna let it go and be like oh yeah okay we'll just stop the Kingdom from existing and give up on it. Dimitri also just wants to keep his people safe and Claude abuses that fact to make Dimitri let him get past him to get to Rhea. Basically, Claude is saying either I kill your people or let you me pass by and kill Rhea. Seeing as Rhea has always supported Dimitri and has never tried to obstruct any part of his rule, it's really shitty to be like oh hey you know this person who has done right by you and has been super chill with you? Let us kill her or I'm gonna kill your people and make you feel like shit about it. He uses people's emotions to make them stop fighting, and what he said to Ashe really bugged me.

There's a lot of stuff at the camp in GW that I saw (I'll end up posting some of it later, it's just that my posts are totally out of order for when I actually post them compared to when I'm playing so that I don't end up posting tons of stuff all at once, flood people's dashboards and then just have nothing to post lol) that really highlight how awful all of this is. Several characters are unhappy with all of it, and then you have the dumbass types who don't give a fuck like Raphael and Leonie (which is BEYOND me, especially with Raphael. He's supposed to be the gentle, kindhearted one and he's like 150% okay and happy with invading and fighting people and just knocking them flat. He gets excited for it. Hopes Raphael just ain't the one for me lol), and they only care about a good fight no matter who they have to kill.

Only a few people regularly question the morality of Claude's army, like Yuri, Hapi, Lorenz and Ashe. Most of them just... do not care. They'd kill good people for a good fight or because they just happen to like Claude so they'll ruin other people's lives.

I know it's just a video game, but... I just hate everything about the second half of GW lol. I love the early Almyran lore and it helps a lot for the missing pieces in Houses, but the story is just... disgusting. I've always hated Edelgard's actions in Houses and I'm not gonna justify Claude's behavior and actions in Hopes just because I like him in Houses. Just like her, he's a huge warmonger in this game. I guess it's because I just... don't like war and I have a very strong mindset on people who do things like that, especially when they attack people who are just living their lives and doing their own thing. Even though I've always been a Kingdom girl, I don't think my feelings would change on any of this if I was more bias toward Leicester. I don't think I'd be comfortable seeing the Kingdom being trampled for literally no reason whatsoever. We can't even blame Cornelia or other TWS members in this game for a lot of what happens to them. It's Edelgard and Claude doing a lot of it.

There's just... a lot of really awful things happening in this game and Claude spearheads a whole ass lot of it.

Claude von Deserved A Lot Fucking Better.

[faroreswinds]

Golden Wildfire - Chapter 11 - Chapter 12

Motherfuckers

Really, the only thing to note from camp is that Lorenz comments that Almyan ships are more advanced than Foldan ones. 

Oh, and Linhardt is actually against the invasion but it still along for the ride

Sreng is fucking attacking. Damn you, Claude. 

Felix is going to intercept him.... dear god, does he die? 

Rodrigue will 100% die though. 

Felix appears in a side map. Defending is land... :(

At least we aren’t allowed to plunder the freaking land, cause Nader really wanted to. 

Guess we are taking a fortress first instead of the city.  

We can persuade Ashe this chapter?! Damn, harsh. 

Lol, I accidently failed my first time. You retreat if you fail to protect the engineers. 

WAIT NO THEY LIVE. 

BUT INSTEAD, SYLVAIN’S FATHER COMES IN TO COVER THEIR RETREAT AND DIES INSTEAD

NOOOOOOO

Hilda “Woohoo!” Here we go, this is SB level shit right here. 

Oh fuck, here we go. Claude is about to complain about the Kingdom’s values. 

It didn’t occur to you until NOW that people were going to fucking die in your invasion?!

“We will create a world where these sacrifices will no longer be necessary. People will be able to live as they please.” BITCH YOU ARE INVADING. 

YOU LITERALLY TOLD ASHE TO RECRUIT HIM THAT DIMITRI WOULDN’T WANT HIM TO DIE SO JUST GIVE UP

FUCK, SYVAIN, I AM SO SORRY. 

Oh, Arval is bringing up Myson now. Arval right. No one seems to care about the nature of Shez’s powers. In SB, they talked about it all the fucking time. 

At least Claude is AWARE that Edelgard wants to unite all of Foldan. 

But his logic is so fucking flawed. Remove the church, then the moral reason for Edelgard’s war is removed. BUT THAT’S WRONG. 

Everyone is a fucking moron. 

Chapter 12

Yuri thinks it’s cruel to bring Ashe along and make him fight in his own territory

Balthus says the previous king sounds like a pretty great guy

Oh, NOW Claude doesn’t want more casualties by not telling Sreng the previous Margrave is dead

Lorenz isn’t bothered by Claude’s plans. He’s just bothered that Claude didn’t tell him originally. 

Hapi points out that the Kingdom is going to probably hold a grudge against us

What? You can point out to Claude that the Empire will likely continue their war even if the Central Church is gone and he is still like “yeah, but... this is the best way I think”

Dimitri has realized pretty much realized what Claude is after, but comes they are “in the war because of the Central Church”. Not really, the Empire was going to come knocking anyways. Why do people KEEP FORGETTING THIS?!

A lot of side maps is protecting the citizens from bandits and shit since... you know, Claude is invading

Ingrid appears in a side map here. 

I took Holst out on an expedition. He thinks accepting the Church of Seiros; teachings is to abandon reason. He also says that pink hair is part of the Goneril bloodline

There is also a side map where part of the Kingdom army stages an attack for vengeance for Margrave Gautier

“Let’s see if a crushing defeat can get through Dimitri’s thick skull!” But you didn’t even try to reach out to him originally... This was your first and only plan....

Lorenz - “How long it’s been since I visited the capital! I would love to come back and study magic here!” SAYS THE INVADER

Dimitri evacuated the city. :,(

Brah, Claude is an ass. Sylvain is like “You killed my dad!” And Claude is just “Well, we are all trying to live here!”

It takes THREE Crested people to even have a shot at Dimitri. 

Dimitri just retreats? 

No fucking way... We are RETREATING?! AFTER ALL THAT?! 

MOTHERFUCKERS!

And then Arval points out how no one seems to seriously consider you are part of the Slithers.

Paralogues

There is a single paralogue in chapter 11 with Claude. You cannot do this paralogue if Judith dies. 

Oh no, someone is attacking the capital! How just so... so horrible. Just like another capital under siege somewhere.... 

Claude wants people in Foldan to look outwards and shit. Well Claude, maybe if you STOPPED INCITING RACE WARS IN OTHER NATIONS THEY MAY CONSIDER IT. 

Judith finally learns the truth, that Claude is an Almyran prince. Shez also figured it out pretty much when they fought Shahid. 

Claude literally has two crowns, hereditary crowns, due to his bloodline. 

ALTERNATIVE PATH

If you are playing on NG+ and kill Jeralt and have Arval in your barracks, a special paralogue opens up for Arval specifically. 

It’s a story of the past. 

Nemesis retreated, and these Slithers are also retreating. Epimenides is covering their retreat. 

Some interesting things.

Thales was still alive at this point. Epimenides doesn’t really like him though

Once, the slithers had overwhelmed the Nabateans through sheer numbers, but don’t have those numbers anymore

The slithers truly believe that Sothis is no god

They “pity” those fighting for her since they don’t know what they are fighting for (frankly, I don’t either, this game told me nothing about why I’m fighting for you, Arval)

Seiros and co don’t really seem to know who Epimenides is...

Epimenides knows that the Saints are spawn of Sothis

Chapter 12

Only the Wolves paralogue is available. I already did it on my SB run so I don’t have anything new to say

Supports

Chapter 11 Supports

Leonie and Shez A support - This support opens up if you recruit Jeralt (stays locked if you don’t though). Leonie is literally fucking jealous of Jeralt’s own kid, even saying she is his first apprentice. At least Shez points out that they have been together WAY longer than she has, and they are literally family. I cannot stand Leonie in Hopes, and I really liked her in Houses overall. 

For some reason, Claude gets supports with two of the Wolves. 

Claude and Constance C support - Claude wants Constance’s magic to change hairstyles (to slip out of sticky situations). 

Claude and Hapi B support - Hapi says claude is more comfortable being with him than the emperor or the king of the Kingdom. Which, like... Dimitri is like, the nicest king ever? 

Claude and Constance B support - Apparently, the men in Almyra LOVE that mountain beard look

I really don’t know why Claude got a support with Hapi. Claude skipping out on meetings, and stuff... I mean, it’s cute, but I just don’t see the connection here. 

Books

Book of Seiros I

The Revelation

The goddess is all things.

She is heaven above and the land below.

She is eternity incarnate.

She is the present, the past, and the future.

Her eyes see all. Her ears hear all. Her hands receive all. 

She who was graced with the holy word of the divine goddess, who bore witness to her magnificence, is the one called Seiros. She is the messenger of the heavens, the bridge between the lands above and below, and her blessing shall bring tidings of peace to all.

With the goddess’s omnipotence and wisdom to guide her, Seiros ensures that her will be done. As the goddess’s sword, Seiros wards away evil. As the goddess’s child, Seiros makes emperors of mortals. As the goddess’s wings, Seiros elevates her people. As the goddess’s voice, Seiros spreads the word of love.

That sublime sword is entrusted to you. Those emperors are crowned before you. Those wings clear your path. That voice whispers words of trust. May the blessings of the goddess follow you, always. 

Crestological Mysteries

Chapter 13 - Crest of the Beast

Maurice’s Crest. Held by Maurice, one of the eleven clan leaders who followed Nemesis more than a thousand years ago.

Was a fearsome warrior who as a young man felled a giant wolf with just a sword. Called a hero in his clan, and soon defeated his father to take over as leader...

We don’t know when he received the Crest. One theory is it was after he swore to fight for Nemesis, who had just defeated him in single combat. 

Or it could be that the Hero’s Relic Blutgang answered his subconscious call for aid when he came face-to-face with an evil presence. He got the sword from Nemesis. 

For the Imperial Army, Maurice and Blutgang became a beast of calamity. His sword was made to end lives. Mounted and flying enemies made for particularly good targets. 

He rampaged through the battlefield, killing many enemy generals and finally a holy warrior. He was greatly feared...

... After the battle of Gronder Field, the war front moved north and Maurice became increasingly unhinged. No one knows why. One day after destroying an enemy camp, he disappeared.

North of the battlefield lay a vast, misty wood, known as the Enchanted Forest of Mircea. No one who went there to search ever returned...

The Crest of the Beast was inherited by the wild oats sown by Maurice and his sons. They lived on in the shadows of various clans and families, and in particular lords who bore a grudge towards the Empire. 

Whenever it became known that someone possessed this detestable Crest, they would suddenly fall ill or meet their end in an untimely accident. Inevitably, the Crest became an unspoken curse...

Torn Pages of a Story

Epilogue

The self-proclaimed king takes a small whistle from the leather satchel on his waist and blows into it sharply. A large dark shadow appears in the night sky, and a wyvern descends to the man’s side. He says to the young girl watching, “Get on if you wish. The choice is yours.”

Without hesitation, the girl approaches the wyvern. The man who says he is the king’s vassal speaks to her.

“You are the daughter of a lord, are you not? You must surely want for nothing back at your home. Would you throw that all away on a flight of fancy with our king?”

The girl smiles and answers the king’s vassal.

“If he can promise to show me something new, I would happily throw it all away. It may be foolish, but it is my foolishness. And surely one can only find true freedom by abandoning themselves to their own whims...”

(This seems to be a fantasy story based on a real person. The first half is missing, so it’s hard to understand what’s happening). 

Tome of Comely Saints

Facts cannot be determined and this text will not take it into account

People think of Saint Macuil when they hear the term comely saint.

Countless songs and poems have been written about his immaculate good looks, among them “The Breeze Upon the Maiden’s Cheek”...

Composed by the Empire’s first female poet: “Winds summoned by wings. Rainbows dripping like glaze. Your beauty sets My heart ablaze.” 

... But we must not forget Saint Cichol. Some claimed he had countless lovers, while others insist he had one true love throughout his life. 

Very few records of saints being married, yet we know Cichol married. His own daughter was made a saint as well. The latter theory is therefore likely true. but of course at the Rhodos Coast...

... Saint Luca and his many offspring, though much of what is said is likely fiction. The man loved love, and a great affection for the many children he brought into the world. However, appearances can be deceiving. Was he truly the comely saint? 

If we consider he perhaps was simply using some sort of power to change his appearance, then...

(A book about the saints. It contains many portraits and is well-worn). 

Commander’s Journal

2nd day of the Blue Sea Moon.

Had to abandon the front and retreat to a hastily constructed stronghold in Foldan’s Throat due to the brutal savagery of the Almyran main force. 

If they get past here, there will be nothing to stop an Almyran invasion of Leicester. 

5th day of the Blue Sea Moon

Almyrans are bearing down. Weather prevents archers from keeping them at bay.

Imperial snipers are coming tomorrow

6th day of the Blue Sea Moon

Weather stays bad. Imperial archers help very little. They also brought a tactician.

7th day of the Blue Sea Moon

Suddenly, the Imperial tactician gathered all of the archers together and showed them some figures. His calculations allowed the arrows to hit true. 

10th day of the Blue Sea Moon

Thanks to the hero tactician, they were able to mount a counterattack at last. 

Fears and Frights of Foldan

Blood Fruit

Grow on battlefields and other lands soaked with blood

Filled with layers upon layers of sweet seeds and you will feel your hunger sated. Until you learn you can’t live without it

Old Gronder legend

The Wandering Beast

In the Enchanted Forest of Mircea, when the mist is thick, a wail can be heard.

Must never go into the woods at this time. For a bloodthirsty beast lurks...

Old Leicester legend

Ghosts Beneath the Earth

Frightful voices can be heard from the ground. 

Are lamentations of the dead who could not reach the goddess and must instead wander the land of the dead

They resent those who live under the sun and at times will drag them down into the depths...

Old Faerghus legend

Dana’s Sandstorm

North has sandstorms that prevents invaders. Merchants can navigate the edges, but anyone entering inside, the scenery will change in an instant. 

A giant sandstorm will rise to tear them to pieces. 

Old Legend from an unknown region.

Fog Giant

If you go into the mountains at dawn, you may find yourself shrouded in fog. Crouch and wait for the fog to disappear. 

Do not flee. Or the Fog Giant will trample you.

An old Faerghus legend.

Death’s Scythe

During the Red Wolf Moon on nights when the moon is full, close your windows. Death comes with a giant scythe to harvest lives.

Do not go outside. Your body will be found later, drained of blood.

An old Mach legend.

The Red Demon

At the bottom of the peaceful-looking Whitehorn Sea, a Red Demon slumbers. When someone goes overboard, the demon will pull them down to drown them. 

It ward against, use oil to...

(A collection of ghost stories from around Foldan).

[metalempire]

The Agarthans Did Nothing Wrong: A defence of the villains of Three Houses and also Edelgard

Spoilers ahead for Fire Emblem Three Houses, obviously.

The point of this post boils down to fuck the church it’s bad and stop calling Edelgard a fascist when that’s not what fascism it you braindead idiots please use google and basic reading comprehension for once in your lives. It also covers the wider ideas of the world of Fodlan and bigger picture political impacts and social structure with a historical viewpoint applied to it. Obviously, the villains do bad shit to achieve their goals, but the actual goals far outweigh the price paid to obtain them. 

The whole thing will be long and thus under a readmore. 

So after playing all the routes and nabbing all the lore and then looking back on the Crimson Flower route I ended up concluding that the villains weren’t actually the villains so much as they were the people killing the most amount of other people at any given time and thus villains by proxy. The actual villain is Rhea, or rather Sothis, kind of. To dive into that we need the basic backstory of Rhea and Sothis, which is given in Verdand Wind. The rough summary is Sothis breathed life into Fodlan, and her children, the Nabateans, a race of immortal dragon people (basically manaketes) ruled over the land. This included the human race, and eventually enough humans are said to have seen themselves as gods and challenged Sothis and the Nabateans in a war that humanity ultimately lost. Those humans were the Agarthans, better known as Those Who Slither In the Dark or TWSITD for short. They retreated underground and created Shambhala, which would become an advanced civilisation and their base. Meanwhile Sothis rests, and the surviving Nabateans live in Zanado with her. Nemesis comes along, kills Sothis in her sleep, drinks her blood and makes the Sword of The Creator from her bones and then massacres the Nabataeans with the 10 Elites to make the other Crests and Hero’s Relics from their bodies. The survivors of this are Rhea, now known as Seiros, and the 4 Saints, who go on to create the Adrestian Empire, beat Nemesis and 10 Elites and create the Church of Serios. The rest of the lore plays out as we know it. However, Nemesis wasn’t a hero, but a level 99 kickass bandit who was working with the Agarthans to get back at Sothis, which is why they recovered his body and that of the 10 Elites. The King of Liberation is the name they gave to him, more on the meaning of that later. 

Edelgard also reveals that the Empire and the Church pretty much exist to control humanity, with the Church as the religious and social control and the Empire with the political and legislative control.  Though Kingdom and Alliance came to be, so long as they had the national religion be Seiros, then they were under church influence all the same. So long as the church controls human culture and belief, it doesn’t really matter. The nobility system is also put in place by Seiros, using the crests created from her fallen brethren that humanity now has, in order to have a pseudo-Nabataean rule vicariously lived through them, which is why the nobles hold power in all regions, and why the Crests have the myth perpetuated as gifts from the goddess alongside their weapons. The church has its’ approved houses all naturally be pious on some level (see: one of Lorenz’s dialogue options earlygame in the monastery where he asks if you come to pray, even though he isn’t highly religious, he explains all nobles must be pious on some level) in order to instill the faith in the ruling powers, and thus, their ideologies and social practices will endure. 

The Insurrection of Seven is very important to all this, since Hanneman reveals that the Emperor was trying to take power away from the nobles so he could control the Empire himself. On the outside this looks like a dictator kind of move, yet in context of the world of Fodlan, this is hum trying to regain power of the Church to be able to determine the fate of the Empire without the Church. The nobles won and the Emperor lost power, yet the Empire does not collapse because regardless, the Church has control thanks to the instilled ways the nobles operate originating from the interests of the Church. 

Now that we know all this, it can be quite obvious that the Church, ruled by the last surviving Nabataeans, namely Rhea, is the continuation of the original social order. Dragons controlling humanity, albeit less overtly this time. With this in mind, the Agarthans didn’t think themselves as gods, but, considering the name they gave to Nemesis, they were simply humans who wanted to decide their own fates, to govern and rule themselves. In Hubert’s A Support, we hear him echo their very sentiments, in which he expresses the importance of humanity for humans, and how inhuman creatures with incredibly long lifespans can’t possibly have enough humanity to know what is best for humankind. Personally I’m inclined to agree with him here, since it’s a very logical point to make. Humankind needs to make advancements in science, culture, medicine, architecture, politics, language, agriculture and technology in order to survive. Living beings need to advance over time and evolve, which is what happened in our world, we developed civilisations and technologies and slowly improved everything over time to reach the point we’re at now. Immortal dragons have far less of a need to make all this progress, their lives aren’t short and limited, the future of their kind depends not on progress, but on stagnant peace “How lovely it would be for this moment to last forever. To hold on to this stolen time, for you and I to create a world without end.”- Rhea, after you complete Chapter 10. The best way to illustrate this is the compare Shambhala with the rest of Fodlan. Shambhala is a much more advanced city, with glowing walls and electricity flowing through it, with magical technology and powerful animated titans, as well as missiles that they use in Verdant Wind, controlled by magic, but clearly made of technology. The Agarthans made advancements in magic and technology when absent of the control of the Nabataeans, of the church, while Fodlan is forever stuck in the middle ages, with no changes made in the thousand years of history, forever a medieval world. With the Nabataeans in power, with the church in power, humankind is forever stuck in stagnancy, never advancing.A great example of this backfiring is when Faerghus experiences a plague that almost ends them all, yet they’re saved by Cornelia. When Cornelia is fought as a boss, she uses Agarthan technology, and is either one of them, or an ally to the Agarthans, as Thales mentions her importance in Crimson Flower, and punishes Edelgard for killing her by blowing up Arianrod with a missile. Cornelia used the advancements in technology, and likely medicine, to be able to beat the plague, which wouldn’t be possible in the stagnant world the Church preserves. 

That’s where Edelgard comes into all this. As the Flame Emperor, she is given the power of two crests, the Crest of Flames no less, after the prototype experiments on Lysithea were a success, in order to have enough power to rival Rhea, and to reshape the world with the power of the progenitor god, the same power Byleth has. Edelgard endured the torment because of two factors; Agarthan desires and the Insurrection of Seven. With her uncle Arudnel being Thales, it was clear he planned on using her, and had infiltrated the royal family, but with the insurrection, it meant the nobles had made it unsafe for her to be in Enbarr. Everything lined up for her to be experimented on and to become the Flame Emperor. She had witnesses her father be defeated by the corrupt nobles of the Church, and she had seen her family die because of the importance of Crests. And so, rather than grow an eyepatch and cry about it, she takes her trauma and pain, and resolves to carry on the Agarthan legacy, but as she states, “There will be no salvation for you and your kind.”, Edelgard has no intention of letting them go free, even though they want the same thing, to liberate humanity from the control of the Nabateans, to allow life itself to move forward, she cannot forgive what they’ve done, and turns on them in the Epilogue of Crimson Flower for all that they did to get here. This is arguably hypocritical of her, but in the end it does also help to make right her own wrongs. It will never absolve her of starting a war that claims lives, but as far as history in the far future she creates is concerned, she took the fight to the right people to kill, and then did it again. History doesn’t care for the people and places lost in the past as much if the future they died to create is a good one. If human progress becomes a reality, then it is considered worth it in the end by those who live in a better age. Edelgard wiped out the Alliance and the Kingdom, and unified Fodlan, all to break the hold of the Church. She took a hard stance and presented an ultimatum, either renounce the Church or die. In her mind, and on a larger scale perspective, the Church is very much like a disease, an infestation that takes hold of the mind and the beliefs. If she compromises, the nobility system will endure and cause pain to people like her, MIklan, Sylvain, Ingrid, Marianne, Lysithea and so many more. 

Interestingly, Edelgard doesn’t oppose religion. When fighting Rhea in chapter 12, she states she has not made an enemy of the goddess, only of the church. What this means is Edelgard allows religion as a belief, and is fine with Sothis worship on a personal level, but has clearly drawn the line with the church, which exists to control people on a sociopolitical level, and is ruled by a literal dragon, not a human with human interests in mind. For her, religion as a belief is fine, but as an institution, it has too much power over the world, and has not been used for the benefit of humanity,  but of the Nabataeans. This is further reinforced by the fact that Rhea used humankind for her own ends, using Byleth and those who came before them to try and resurrect Sothis, and have her mother rule the world once more. For Edelgard, this would create further disparity, where a literal god would rule the world, rather than humankind, and so things would only stagnate further, and possibly degrade. Due to their belief system of worship, people would be subservient to a resurrected Sothis, never rebelling or complaining, becoming like slaves and ultimately never advancing as a species. Edelgard had to destroy the church, wipe out the remaining Nabateans (you actually miss two of them on Crimson Flower lol so she didn’t even manage to make them go extinct) and give humanity’s destiny back to itself, shattering Rhea’s ambitions and allowing the world to move forward. Her path is very similar to Emperor Rudolf’s from Shadows of Valentia, starting a war in order to ultimately have events play out that have old gods of the world, who were degenerating into madness, die out and give the land back to humankind. Edelgard does much the same, using a war to liberate humanity as a collective whole from the reign of the Nabateans, crushing their institutions of power and setting her own in place instead. Whether or not this creates a better future is unknown, but the potential for that future can exist now, whereas under the rule of the Church, it could never be possible. 

Edelgard and Agarthans brought death and suffering to many people, but in a world ruled by people instead of stagnant gods, an even greater number of people could be living in a world far better in every way to one that came before it. In the end, it’s a question of if the means justify the ends. Is it worth war and bloodshed, for the sake of freedom from the control of institutions that are self concerned and perpetuate social and political misery and stagnancy? Only the people of a future Fodlan can answer that question, but honestly, I think it’s worth taking a chance on a better future for all humankind, even if it means alot of people won’t live to see it, because in the end, our future is the only thing we have as a species, and it shouldn’t be in the hands of those who could never understand what it means to live and die, and to move forward through time. 

Also turns out all of this is pointless anyway cos Verdant Wind is a better outcome anyway thank god for Claude Von Ending Racism for proving everyone is colossal idiot.