#I LOVE SOV my first FE game and it cracked my egg in a spectacular domino effect | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

felikatze · 1 year

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replaying sov i have feelings again

super super cool how alm and celica are both strong-willed characters but in opposite directions

so from like act 1 and 2. alm has an incredibly strong sense of duty even before joining the deliverance. it's clear that he knows he is a capable warrior to the point it may come off as delusion of grandeur (to be fair he made it very difficult to train units bcuz he kept critting everything to death) and as a result has a strong sense of guilt related to what he sees his duty to be.

he believes that he as a warrior is required to use his might for the greater good even before stepping foot out of ram. it's one of the reasons he's so eager to leave to begin with. why should he spend his days tending sheep when he has learned battle and zofia needs all the warriors it can get?

his sense of duty only intensifies when clive pronounces him leader of the deliverance. at first he's hesitant because he's a warrior and not a tactician, but once it's clear that role still falls to clive he steps up immediatly. in his act 2 reunion with celica we already see that alm considers what he must do as a leader above any desire he or celica may have.

he's also much more pragmatic than celica. whereas at first he can come off as a hothead because he charges into battle, he is not a person to believe in miracles. instead, he believes he must wage war because mila will not suddenly turn up and save them. the people must save themselves.

celica may seem the more calm and collected one on a moment-to-moment basis, but she is much more idealistic. she believes miracles can fix things. and i think most importantly she wants someone else to fix everything.

by going to mila she is hoping that a goddess will make everything right for her and that she won't have to be the princess to do it. whereas alm embraces duty to an unhealthy degree, celica abhors it. after all, it is her status as a princess that almost got her killed, that killed her brother, that tore her away from alm. it is quite understandable that she doesn't want to be the responsible one.

and that hatred for this duty, for having to fullfill it, she ends up projecting on alm which drives the conflict between them in their reunion. for celica, alm shouldn't have to be leader either, blood be damned, because she knows how horrible the life of royalty is. in the ideal world she wishes for, she never would've left ram at all. mila has to fix everything. nobody should have to die when mila can save them. nobody should have to take up arms.

it's a very interesting conflict bcuz it's not how these characters appear on the surface. alm tends to wear his emotions on his sleeve and celica tends to put up more of a facade, so you don't expect alm to be the pragmatist and celica to be the idealist.

of course these initial characterizations get subverted in increasingly fun ways as alm gets an identity crisis and way too many personal conflicts and celica ends up utterly consumned by the duty to stop duma after mila can't, but hey, that's good writing, babey. nobody can get what they want and everybody gets their worldview challenged.

#feli speaks #fire emblem shadows of valentia #did anybody expect me to *not* go on a long tangent upon announcing i'm replaying a game? no? you all saw this coming?#I LOVE SOV my first FE game and it cracked my egg in a spectacular domino effect #all the plottwist are SOOO obvious and i love them anyways bcuz the knowledge creates agony #and it's quite reasonable for the characters to refuse evidence on an emtional basis i.e conrad and mycen twists #like yeah celica already grieved her brother all hope that he's alive died long ago #and for alm to accept that he's adopted would be to acknowledge that mycen lied to him his whole life #so no duh they only accept these things when confronted with irrefutable evidence #and not just like. knowledge of how storytelling and foreshadowing work

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