#there are some parallels to VW with GW that I feel could be interesting to try and lay out that I haven't seen discussed or theorized

[butwhatifidothis]

In the spirit of your Golden Deer and VW rewrite, do you have any plans for a similar rewrite of GW?

I do! I'm just trying to figure out the best ways in going about it, seeing how Hopes has a very strange way of going about how the routes interact with each other thematically, as well as having so little to work with wrt the obvious - and, frankly, almost inarguably best - road GW should have gone down (Claude's connections with Almyra + his family, and how that connects back to his trust issues with the Deer/in general, not giving too much focus to the war in Fodlan - you know, something that could directly place Claude's personal stories in the forefront instead of making him Bootleg Edelgard).

Unlike with SS vs VW, where even with VW being a copy/paste it could theoretically be bent to allow for personal growth for Claude given SS' story’s lack of contradictory elements to Claude's character, GW being a copy/paste of CF drastically makes things much more difficult to form a rewrite around in the same manner as I tried to do with VW's, as the story itself has Claude behaving in distinctly OOC ways.

Because even in the VW rewrite, there was little change done to what actually happens in the route's chapters - it's still prologue -> mock battle -> Lonato -> Holy Mausoleum -> Miklan -> Flayn -> Gronder 1 -> Remire -> Chapel -> Sealed Forest -> Holy Tomb -> Edelgard's siege -> get rid of the bandits -> defend Garreg Mach -> Aillel -> Great Bridge -> Gronder -> Merceus -> Hubert/Death Knight -> Edelgard -> Shambhala -> Nemesis. It's the bits of story that happens between the chapters that's ultimately what changes: motivations, dialogue, reactions, relationships, those were what changed (to the best of my ability in keeping them in line with the characters as possible). Nothing happens in the chapters themselves in SS that actively contradict Claude's character... which is very much not the case with GW.

On one hand, there's less chapters to work with: Chapters 1 and 2 have nothing to do with Claude, and Chapters 3-8 have him, for the most part, be perfectly in character (if waaaaaay more whiney about having to work, but that's the only real gripe I have with Part 1 GW!Claude and is easy enough to simply write out/lessen the amount it happens). It's only in Part 2 that Claude is unceremoniously replaced with Claudelgard, which means there's only Chapters 9-15 would have to have any major upheaval - maybe Chapter 8, to rework a certain thing that happens. Even adding in the route split at Chapter 10 on top of that, that’s still a collective 13 chapters compared to... all of GD and VW lmao. And to kick it off, GW will of 3H’s Claude character already there as a base, and unlike with the writers of Hopes I won’t be too busy chugging glue to remember that lmaooo.

On the other hand... the overwhelming majority of what happens in those chapters - both in between the story events and the story events themselves - would have to be immensely reworked, which would entail a bigger undertaking than VW’s rewrite would. I’d have to think of a story to rewrite, not just a character arc and the results of that on other characters. Though, given how completely half-assed GW’s story is, maybe that won’t be as big an issue as it seems like lmaooo a giraffe could slam its head against a typewriter and come up with a better story than what GW’s Part 2 gave.

Another, more minor thing that would make this difficult is that part of the reason I felt I could rewrite VW was due to just how many times I’ve played through the route or read through the datamine of its contents... which is something I just don’t want to do with GW. Went through the story once, felt fuckin’ awful playing through it, and I can barely stand watching Claudelgard act like a blithering, violent idiot in Part 2, even on a muted video on double speed. It’s something that’s necessary if only to pick up on anything that could be potential dusted off and spat-shined to be something workable, but... ugh. GW’s Part 2 is some of the least amount of fun I’ve ever sat through, so that’s gonna be a bummer lol.

All in all it’d likely take even longer for this rewrite to be written out lmao, but! I do want to give it a shot, seeing how fun it was to do so for VW - I even have Almyra to work around with this time, which I stopped myself from dipping too much into for VW’s. So once I get enough time to work on it I’ll try to lol