I finally listened to Nopes!A Funeral of Flowers and while i prefer the FE16 versions...

AFOF is basically Rhea's theme, it's beautiful and yet encompasses her tragedy at the end of SS because the plot has her suddenly grow mad and the cast has to take her down - for some reason FEH tried to honeypot around but ultimately doesn't make sense.

In Nopes?

It only plays on Supreme Bullshit (Golden Shower has a special Nopes!made song)!

It's oddly heroic, like, a hero making their last stand but... it fits, after all, Rhea's the Hero who sacrifices her life to take down Thales!

TFW even the OST reveals Rhea is the hero of Supreme Leader's protagonist route :/

Do You Ever Feel People Just Don't "Get" Dimitri?

I talked to my brother about Three Hopes, and he wanted to see an "evil" Dimitri. He wanted Dimitri to kill innocent people and other horrible stuff he didn't get to do in Three Houses.

I was just flabbergasted. Because that's so counter to the core of who Dimitri is that even thinking there's a chance you could see it in an official piece of Fodlan media just floored me.

He's not a Dimitri hater at all. He's primarily a Claude fan, but thinks Azure Moon and Dimitri got the best story. He doesn't like Edelgard and doesn't care about Rhea. He never participates in discourse and doesn't know anything about famous "takes." Just your average FE fan being honest about what they would enjoy.

I get where he came from. He felt Dimitri's actions didn't go far enough in Azure Moon - too justifiable for the "fallen man" plot. I disagree, but I get it. I also get the desire to see villain!Dimitri, in fanfiction only though.

I think some people want Dimitri to be something he's not - morally grey like Claude and Edelgard. Core parts of them are "grey." Dimitri's just not. He's black-and-white - good or bad. Dimitri's driving principle is to protect and serve the disadvantaged. Injustice and others' suffering infuriates him to a detrimental degree and mixes it up with his own unresolved trauma. Having him willingly and gleefully injure someone innocent is against the most prominent part of his character.

Dimitri's black-and-white in a universe of grey. He's the "square peg in a round hole." When the character doesn't fit the role they're supposed to play, the conflict created makes things more interesting. He's a Lord of the Rings character trying to survive Game of Thrones, if you will. And that makes him soooo interesting - how he doesn't fit. I understand people wishing Dimitri to be something he's not, but I think it's exactly what they wish wasn't true that makes him stand out so much.

I was just so amazed someone so neutral could get Dimitri so horribly wrong.

can i just say, i find it very funny how a good majority of GW defenders’ counter arguments essentially boil down to “GW makes perfect sense actually you’re all just too DUMB to understand!!1!” hdhdhsjjf fe3h fans in general have such a superiority complex, it’s genuinely hilarious watching them ardently defend the world’s most mediocre dogshit writing💀

That's such a huge part of what makes them so infuriating lmao, they act like they're so smart just cuz they're willing to overlook blatant contradictions.

"Yeah, sure, the game exclusively wrote Shahid to be a murderous racist towards Claude and wrote exactly 0 positive connections between the two of them, but Claude killing Shahid in self-defense would totally make him completely willing to kill completely innocent people! How can GW detractors just not see that!!"

"Yeah, sure, Claude himself says that Edelgard 'might be hoping she can vanquish the Alliance and the Kingdom in one go and rebuild Fodlan from the ground up' and that Edelgard wants to 'bring the fight to the rest of Fodlan,' but it TOTALLY MAKES SENSE that him reading Edelgard's manifesto OFF-SCREEN and only mentioning this AFTER SHE LIED TO HIS FACE would make him 180 and make him believe that getting rid of the Church would make Edelgard stop her war! It just makes so much sense!!"

"Yeah, sure, in 3H Claude says that Edelgard's violence both ruins his ambitions and is something the people can't stand behind, but Claude was sus of the Church and Edelgard wanted to COMPLETELY DESTROY IT, which are totally the same thing and which totally explains why Claude just becomes Edelgard 2.0 in Hopes! YOU just never understood Claude's character and only wanted him to follow Dimitri around (unlike us, who totally don't just want him to follow Edelgard around)!!"

"Yeah, sure, Claude's ENTIRE GOALS revolve around bettering foreign relations, but it makes sense for him to worsen Faerghus/Fodlan's foreign relations with Sreng because the Church was doing that already! What's so hard to understand!!"

"Yeah, sure, the devs said they wrote Claude around the idea of him being more ambitious while simultaneously giving him no ambitions for after the war and 180'ing on what he wanted to do during the war, but isn't what he's doing so much more ~interesting~ and ~dark~? Hopes!Claude haters just wanted Claude to be a goody two shoes!"

It's all just incredibly condescending and pretentious as all hell. Because it can't POSSIBLY be the case that Claude - in a noncanonical spin-off game, with a different director from 3H's in charge of it - was just written badly and OOC. It can't POSSIBLY be the case that even when disconnected from his base 3H character, Hopes!Claude is chock-full of contradictions in his characterization between his Part 1 and Part 2 iterations. And it DEFINITELY can't POSSIBLY be meaningful in any way that damn near ALL of the people that insist that Hopes!Claude is either completely congruent with 3H!Claude or is what 3H!Claude SHOULD have been... all either prefer Edelgard or ship Edel///claude (the ship which can be overwhelmingly condensed down to "Claude doing whatever it is Edelgard wants without having any character of his own" and oh, would you look at what he does in Hopes, oh gee must be a coincidence that they all lap that shit up).

Nope, Claude fans who prefer Claude as their fave lord? Secretly never liked him! It's totally US who have a fanon version of Claude we like over the canon version, and definitely not the ones who like him doing shit and saying shit and believing shit that runs diametrically opposed to literally everything he stands for in 3H ("the Kingdom threw us to the wolves first 300 years ago" yeah THAT isn't fanon Claude, nope). Claude fans who don't wholeheartedly accept that Hopes!Claude is either who Claude was all along or is otherwise 100% in-line with his 3H counterpart never liked him at all.

And don't even bring up people who like Claude but prefer Dimitri lmao.

It's just this weird habit of fandom I'm seeing nowadays, where if you don't accept the writing as perfect and if you point out blatant inconsistencies then OBVIOUSLY you either were never a fan or you just "don't understand man." It can't ever be the writers at fault for writing something bad anymore, it's always the fans who are lacking something to be able to "appreciate" what's given to them. Just look at how any and everyone who criticizes Edelgard is automatically deemed a hater of her. There's a mutual of mine who literally buys merch of Edelgard, buys zines of Edelgard, and will readily have Edelgard in their Top 5 favorite 3H characters, and even they get accused of hating her just because they have the gall to... point out that Edelgard has very noticeable flaws, both as a character and in her writing.

That's basically what I'm seeing happen with Hopes!Claude. You criticize him? You're making discourse, you aren't a fan of him, you're a hypocrite in some way, you never understood him. His fans - much like Edelgard's, oh wow would you look at that hmm must be a complete coincidence again - make it so fuckin' hard to like him, even if you do genuinely like Hopes!Claude. If you like him as the bad guy he very clearly is because he is making very clearly villainous actions? Nope, you're not liking him the right way. If you like him in concept but feel his execution was lacking? Nope, you're not liking him the right way. Just like with Edelgard, you have to like Hopes!Claude in a very specific way or you will be called a hater of some kind. And that attitude just isn't conducive to a welcoming fandom environment

Vague spoilers anon again, whatever’s going on with Claude isn’t good but not at bad as first assumed, like a -2 instead of a -5

Yeah, just... (spoilers under the cut. I said fuck it and looked at some stuff)

... it ain't even so much with Claude doing what he's doing specifically (tho it is a sizeable part) that pisses me off, and the context does soften the blow a bit.

It's honestly the fact that Rhea is apparently not allowed to have any fucking peace. Why are Koei and/or IntSys like this to her? She already canonically dies in Verdant Wind in base game 3H, and it's very easy for her to die in Moon and Snow (the central character to the route has a chance to fucking die, great) at that.

Now the only chance she has in Three Hopes as we see now is in Gleam? She has to do a "taking you with me" at the end of Blaze, and Claude has to be railroaded into being a fucking moron who humors Edelgard's claims (despite being established as someone who doesn't trust anyone at just their word) and kills her in Wildfire? Because he's of the opininon that the central church is the reason for the war happening and not, y'know, THE FUCKING EMPEROR WHO STARTED IT???

And from what I've seen, Rhea doesn't even seem to be involved in the alternate path fuckery dealing with Solon and Arval, so there's nothing for her there either.

It's just infuriating that one of the main characters of Fodlan's universe has to repeatedly suffer because of dumb bullshit, and that not even what's supposed to be a fun musou spinoff can give her a happy ending that's afforded to every other main character.

"most of Fodlan either needed Rhea or cared about her." While this is 100% true, Hopes would make you believe that SPECIFICALLY LEICESTER, CLAUDE'S TERRITORY, doesn't give too shits about Rhea. Not even anyone from the Eastern Branch of the Church, which was never said to be hostile to the Central Church like the Western one is, cares about Clyde deliberately and explicitly trying to kill Rhea.

Which makes both Clyde's obsession in doing so and the fandom's yippy ki-yay attitude towards him doing so all the more infuriating, because that's DIRECT PROOF that Rhea doesn't need to be killed. But no one in the fandom who likes Clyde will admit that, and everyone in the game who hints towards that being the case is just flatly ignored.

Most Claude fans I see explicitly hate Rhea and want her dead and I just don’t get it. Like... I don’t feel like anything she did was so horrible that she deserves to die. A lot of things that she did were also done out of concern for the last few of her people. Much of it was fear and paranoia, and unfortunately Edelgard is literally her biggest fears actually happening, i.e. a human wanting to kill the dragons simply for being dragons.

When it comes to Claude, I get he doesn’t like her being in power, but I don’t understand why not wanting someone in power has to equal They Must Die. In Hopes, too, he can’t even really give reasons why she supposedly shouldn’t be in power because he doesn’t know anything. Anything he would know in this case is what Edelgard would know, which evidently is not much in Hopes because she doesn’t know in SB that Rhea is the Immaculate One (in the final chapter of SB, she learns it for the first time when you fight Rhea).

In Houses we don’t really know Leicester’s stance on the Church and Rhea that well. Hopes just kind of... threw a bunch of stuff in that we have no real background for. They also make it sound like a super bad thing that most of the people there don’t know what Rhea looks like, but like... duh??? They don’t exactly have cars and planes for Rhea to take trips to Leicester on the regular. She’s at the center of Fodlan, so it’s not like she’s out and about and traveling the continent.

Irl like yeah there are people in power who I think shouldn’t be in power, but I don’t... think they deserve to die because I don’t agree with how they run things? It’s not like every leader is scum of the earth and has to die because you don’t like them. It’s baffling in Hopes how people just go with the idea of killing her because they’ve suddenly decided “down with the Church”. Even if they wanted the dissolution of the church, why does that have to involve killing?

Seeing that kind of thinking in the fandom also feels so weird to me. As in, it’s just very odd to witness it happening in front of me, with people saying how they can’t wait for her to die. There are very few characters that aren’t specifically villains that I’d look at and be like “that one deserves to die for what they’ve done”. When Rhea executed people, it was always when harm was brought to people/an attacked happened, such as the clergy that were executed in Houses. Sometimes yeah I think maybe she jumps to execution a bit fast, but I also understand the people she makes that choice against aren’t exactly innocent people. It’s not like she goes around picking out random people to kill. If they get executed, it’s because the Church found/had some kind of evidence that the person/people in question did something that threatened lives.

As an example of why I think Rhea jumps too fast to execution, when Dimitri is confronted with a man who turned against Lambert and was involved in Duscur, he doesn’t immediately make the decision to kill the man. He has him imprisoned first for his confessed crimes, choosing to think it over before making a decision. Granted, I don’t think Rhea was entirely wrong since she did execute people who knowingly endangered others, so it’s technically not a bad decision, and I think that’s a result of her not wanting to take any chances. More like, there was room for leniency but I don’t think she’s wrong not to have it.

And again, I don’t see why any of that equates to her deserving death. While I understand people don’t think of video games from an irl perspective, to me seeing all these violent reactions to what she does/doesn’t do and wanting her dead simply because they don’t like her in power just doesn’t feel right. Like, it makes me wonder how many of these people would do the same thing if it was a real person.

Love when people tell Claude fans that thinking he's ooc in 3 Hopes means that they "ignored details about his character" or "never REALLY understood him" and how "his grand ambitions stayed the same so he's obviously in-character."

Oh, yeah, sorry for thinking that Claude starting a border conflict between Faerghus and Sreng just to get a slight edge in battle against a Kingdom that's doing literally nothing wrong to him is more than a goddamn """"mistake"""" that he can """grow past.""" Sorry for DARING to think that a guy whose ENTIRE CHILDHOOD was spent with enemies around him SPECIFICALLY BECAUSE OF A BORDER CONFLICT wouldn't ever go on to START one himself, especially when he also claims to want to mitigate bloodshed and stop the fighting! Sorry for thinking a guy who has self-admitted trust issues that crop up in multiple places in BOTH games suddenly forgets he has that flaw when it comes to believing a woman who LITERALLY LIED TO HIS FACE about not invading his land with the intent to conquer it WHEN HE HAS LITERALLY JUST FENDED OFF AN ATTACK ON HIS CAPITAL. Sorry for thinking him not being curious or inquisitive is him being massively OOC when it was LITERALLY HIS CURIOSITY AND INQUISITIVENESS THAT BROUGHT HIM TO FODLAN IN THE FIRST PLACE.

I feel like I'm losing my mind! People trying to say that this is ANYTHING like his character to do when it so BLATANTLY slaps everything his character stood for in the face is CRAZY! The game can't even keep its rendition of Claude straight in its own lore so why are people trying to hard to make it fit 3H!Claude?? I knew people were desperate to have Claude make big mistakes/make more morally dubious decisions like Dimitri and Her Majesty do but why should it come at the expense of his character? Sorry for the rant but man seeing people describe the people upset with Claude's shitty writing like that is so infuriating

Sadly I've already seen this in the twitter circle that usually makes up my timeline. There are some people that like what Hopes did with Claude; honestly, good for them, because it means they can be happy with the game. But I can't take them seriously, at the end of the day, for a handful of reasons, the least of which are the ones you mentioned. It's like. This isn't even the same guy, and there isn't even a reason for him to be like this; he just is. There's no Doylist v. Watsonian explanation, because the care wasn't put into this game to even try and make Claude into someone who would make the choices he does, mainly because it goes against the very fibre of his being. At the end of the day, it was a cash grab first and foremost, and that's what the game did. If the people are happy to have had their cash grabbed--meh! I wish them happiness.

still having 3h brainrot means i sometimes think about silver snow and get so pissed off at wasted potential

FE3H route review and thoughts - Verdant Wind

This was the second route I played, since I had heard that this was where most of the lore was. Unfortunately, I found most of the Golden Deer not nearly as emotionally engaging as I did the Blue Lions. Hell, for the first half of the game, it's not even clear what Claude's actual goals are and why he is so obsessed with uncovering the secrets of the church. I think many people appreciate this route for its more lighthearted, free of character drama tone, but that's part of what makes it not work me. Much of what I am going to put in the "things I would have changed" section comes from @butwhatifidothis‘s great essay on how to improve Verdant Wind, which I encourage everyone to read. Overall, I would put this route in second place, together with Silver Snow. Rest beneath the cut, because it got long: 

Things I really liked about this route, in no particular order:

We learn the grim reality behind crests, heroes relics and the church.

Claude is willing to investigate if he knows the full story and will admit when he's wrong.

This house has the most commoners, and as a consequence offers a refreshing perspective on Fodlan.

Nader and Judith are great.

This route had the best paralogues (and no, I am not just saying that because of Thyrsus, I'm saying that because Marianne's was amazing from a character and lore perspective, Claude's was infuriating but also very interesting because we get to meet Macuil), Leonie's interactions with Indech are gold, Lorenz's and Raphael & Ignatz's tie into each other somewhat, and Hilda's & Cyril's gives more background info on Almyra.

Leonie is a character who seems absolutely insufferable if you only judge her by her interactions with Byleth, but she is literally such an amazing person, I can't.

Final map is amazing. Seeing Nemesis and the original elites was really neat.

Things I didn't like/would have changed (once again, much of this was explained in much better detail then I ever could by butwhatifidothis and you should all read their excellent write-up):

Claude is always touted as this master tactician and much is said about how he's carefully navigating the political bickering of the alliance lords... off screen. We should have seen at least two roundtable conferences on screen (could have been as simple as one inanimate background with a bunch of relatively generic looking portraits, voice actors for the roundtable lords could have been recycled from other side characters). One of these should have been during chapter 5, where Claude does actually mention having to go to one of these, the other one when he goes to a conference with Byleth after the time skip. Show us how he has gone from talented, but inexperienced teenager who gets exhausted by those meetings to a shrewed schemer who plays the roundtable lords like a fiddle.

After rescuing Rhea, Claude basically does a 180 from "I don't trust Rhea or the church and you're the reason Fodlan is so isolated" to "oh, nevermind, I was wrong, my bad, we're cool" in one chapter. Really? Really. Why not sprinkle some of that in pre time skip? Let him have his "hey, people from all over are here, so maybe the church is not as intolerant as I thought" moment pre time skip. After he finds out Tomas was Actually Evil All Along, he tosses the information he was given by him. Let him take that a bit further. Let him question if his opinion of Rhea may be biased, so his change of mind after the time skip does not come out of the blue. For that matter, let him question the points of Edelgard's war proclamation (like "Edelgard claims the church hoarded the wealth of the people to live in extravagance, but honestly? I've seen the archbishop's living space. It's not fancy at all.")

Slithers and Nemesis by extension were fun to fight, but they also felt tacked on. Claude says plenty about the church, but it's not until Lysithea points out the dubious mages halfway through the post time skip that he starts thinking about Slithers again. All it would have taken was a line here or there in earlier chapters to let us know "okay, he's investigating the church and relics and such, but he's also looking into what happened there with Tomas and Kronya". You could even go so far as to have him task Lysithea (or if she is dead, a group of mages in his employ) with tracking Slithers after Merceus, so he finds their stronghold on his own even before Hubert's letter arrives.

I cannot express how utterly disappointed I was that the most Claude ever revealed about himself to the rest of the Deer was "I was not born in Fodlan". Dude, if you want people to believe that We Can All Be Friends and Borders Shouldn't Matter Trust Me I Know, then you'd better be more forthcoming than that to make me believe that you are not talking out of our rear. In the scene after Fort Merceus, let him stand by what he always claims—that if people from both sides of the border knew each other, just talked to each other, they would see they are actually much alike and shouldn't be hating each other. Let him admit he's half Almyran and lets us see the fallout from that: that some people truly won't care (e.g. Ignatz, Leonie, Raphael), others will even be sympathetic to his struggles with hiding part of himself (Marianne, Lysithea), but others will feel betrayed because he tells them so late (Hilda) and others will seriously question his intentions and judgment as leader of the Alliance (Lorenz). Let us have some conflict/tension within the Deer here and shave some of that naivete off of Claude's ideals. Let him reap the fallout from the truth. In the scene that follows, where the Deer canonically discuss the place Byleth and Claude hold in their lives, let them discuss these different viewpoints and come to agree that they will still give trusting Claude a chance, because he hasn't led them into ruin so far.

Finally, a personal pet peeve of mine: the fucking diary scene. Change it so that if you tell him "no" more than once, he will back off and in the next explore dialogue, let Byleth willingly hand him the diary and change his dialogue to "Is this Jeralt's diary? Teach... thank you, truly. I promise to treat it with the utmost care and return it to you as soon as possible." And then, after the time skip, when the two of them have their reunion picknick, let him say: "Oh, before I forget: I promised to give this back, so here you are. [insert picture of diary] Thank you for letting me borrow this, Teach, and I'm sorry it took me so long to return it to you. I learned a lot from it." Because honestly? The original diary scene in combination with Claude never coming clear about his origins really made him seem like a hypocritical, boundary pushing ass. My opinion on him never recovered from that and it infuriates me that just two simple changes could have fixed this.

I was looking over Silver Snow cutscenes again and wow the amount of times Seteth shuts down a decision Byleth made is so infuriating. If Byleth says they don't want to fight Edelgard he yells at them and goes "only you can save Fodlan!" and his reason for thinking Byleth is the chosen one is because they showed up at the monastery when he did so congrats Seteth I'm benching you forever.

I can't blame Seteth entirely because the writers made him serve the purpose of Telling the Player What To Do and sometimes that meant he was the embodiment of this game's railroading in a much more direct way than the lords are in their routes.

But also? Seteth doesn't want a leadership role. He never takes that role even when left alone without Byleth or Rhea there. Yet he will micromanage the heck out of Byleth when they're in charge. He does not hesitate to Steer Them On the Correct Path at all times. I think that goes back to my theory that Seteth is more comfortable one-on-one with people than being in charge of large organizations, and that extends to "advising" what is supposed to be the actual leader.

On one hand it really is placing an awful lot of faith in the smallest of things to choose your next pope based on them showing up at an opportune time. On the other hand, like... Sothis literally did wake Byleth up right on time to meet whoever they needed to at the monastery. Like, he's actually not wrong about it being divine intervention. It's just that divine intervention comes in the form of a sassy disembodied voice, so on Byleth's end the whole thing doesn't exactly feel grand or holy.

Alright I finished Crimson Flower and after letting my thoughts marinate for a bit, I decided to do a very long write up on my thoughts. Despite the fact that I made a beeline for black eagles the moment I got the game because I had an extreme feverish passion for El at first, my thoughts on this route are unfortunately mostly negative. This is the first and only route I played so far, and I know very little about the events that transpire in the other routes.

Five thousand disclaimers that these are just my opinions that may or may not change when I play the other routes and it’s not meant to discredit folks who like Crimson Flower. Also there will be spoilers.

For starters, I think the story does a terrible job at convincing you that Edelgard’s actions are justified or even necessary. This route felt less like fighting to change the world for the better and more like a savage conquest with every chapter being El going like “we gotta kill this guy now” and I’m like “but why” and El’s like “WE JUST GOTTA”. I guess the right way to say it is that El’s route lacked emotional impact. I could not celebrate her victories with her because my only reaction was “was that really necessary” and “buddy why”. It ultimately felt like El was simply solving problems by creating more problems.

Instead of just saying “I want to uproot a societal system from its core so I have to overthrow the Church”, the story opts for El to give incredibly vague and wishy washy reasons on why the Church Is Bad. Something something, they’re not really humans and twist history??? The story forces you to do some crazy mental gymnastics to try and see El’s side of the story when everything just boils down to “Crests are Bad = Church is Bad”.

In Part 1, there was a lot of build up of the church’s obvious corruption and how they’re not to be trusted, but the build up falls flat because the story tries to make the reveal of Rhea’s beast form be the damning thing to convince the player that the church is so terrible that they have to be stopped even at the cost of thousands of lives... and well... in a franchise where almost everyone is secretly a dragon, that just did not sell me. 

We’ve been knew that Crests Are Bad but does that justify sacrificing thousands of lives to upheave the church? I dunno man..................................... the story doesn’t really put much effort to convince you that this is the Only Way and it doesn’t feel like El has put much thought into trying alternative solutions before jumping straight to murder because it was the easiest solution. Which sucks because I think exploring El’s methods and mindset would definitely make for an interesting conflict. The whole idea of if war is never justifiable, is it better to let everyone remain suffering under the status quo forever? El’s belief that nothing will change unless she takes direct action has validity to it, but the game just expects you to agree with her from the get go so El never truly has to stand firm and defend her values.

Edelgard’s decision to unify Fodlan is something I really, really side eye. She’s straight up invading sovereign lands and putting them under her own rule of her own volition. While yes, Church Is Bad, barging into someone else’s land uninvited to dictate how they rule their government and “fix their society” is ultimately something I find incredibly self righteous and arrogant. This idea of “fighting for peace” through not just instigating a war, but going on a violent conquest just seems... disingenuous to me? How does she plan on dealing with the lingering resentment from the folks whose land were conquered? She’s just replacing the crest system with an Empire who will murder anyone who stands against them which... makes her literally no different from what Rhea was.

The above point is mainly due to her whole tirade into the alliance which just felt extremely unnecessary, especially when Claude was trying to keep the alliance in a neutral stance. El’s reasoning for conquering the alliance because “some of the nobles oppose me” was really flimsy like... maybe they wouldn’t oppose you if you just left them alone instead of making them choose between handing over their independence or having their land burnt to the ground. 

Her dialogue with and about Dimitri is ridiculous because she criticizes him for being consumed by hatred and obsession and “losing his path as a king” but...... bruh, you’re STILL invading his country, so even if Dimitri wasn’t a raging murder man, he’d still oppose you because did you just expect a king to simply Hand Over His Land and not defend himself????? 

The absolute worst, worst part of CF isn’t even Edelgard herself but how the other students react to her. It feels like none of the beagles and especially the other house characters except Lysithea have any real reason to side with her, and even if they did (which wouldn’t be surprising because we see how the crests ruined so many lives), these valid reasons are never brought up and it’s overshadowed by almost everyone lamenting “is this bloodshed even necessary?” (news flash: probably not). But why the FUCK are you guys even siding with her in the first place if you're gonna regret it afterwards or don’t actually agree with her? You don’t just side with an instigator of war with half baked resolves, and the convictions of these characters aren’t even quarter baked. 

This wouldn’t be too bad if not for the fact that the beagle kids themselves also seem to have more reasons to turn on El than to fight for her. Especially when Edelgard has done nothing to ever prove herself trust worthy. Hell, CF is kicked off with Edelgard betraying everyone and revealing herself to be the Flame Emperor, which is literal admittance to her association with the slithers. Yet no one seems to put two and two together and just decides to blindly trust and follow her without second thought because... why? Who knows!!! As Sothis so eloquently puts it, they’re all boulders just rolling down whatever hill they’re on, and I could not stand how little agency and independent thought that the other characters showed. It felt like El was the driver while everyone else was just strapped into the passenger seat, mindlessly going along with the ride. No questions, no thoughts, no challenges, and to top it off, it doesn’t even feel like any of them truly believe in what they’re fighting for because they never bring up the validity of El’s ideals or the consequences of her actions. 

The beagles had the group dynamic of a wet paper bag. Lysithea is the one of the only characters who actively shows any real agency for fighting for Edelgard and firmly voices how El’s goals compare to her personal values, which is a stark difference to everyone else who has a "¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I guess this is my life now” type attitude to an infuriating degree. 

Byleth siding with El also has me doing extreme shifty eyes. I can get behind them making an emotionally charged decision to defend her from Rhea but holy crap I saved you from Rhea because I didn’t want you to die, but that doesn’t mean I’m giving you the okay to murder all your classmates!! The game expects the player to take a huge leap of faith when siding with Edelgard, thinking “she has to have a proper explanation for this” and cue.... no explanation ever, until like... five years later. El’s relationship with the beagles felt disingenuous because she actively breaches the trust of others, lies to others, hides crucial information from others (slithers, anyone?), and nobody cares. She straight up lies about the church nuking Arianrhod and it’s never addressed.

The issue with the slithers and Byleth’s dad is even worse because it is never addressed until well into the route, and it’s brought up by not El, but fucking Hubert. Not to mention El is giant jackass to Byleth after their dad died even though he died because of her damn accomplices. We’re supposed to just lie down and accept the slithers’ presence because “well they’re necessary for our plans” even though we curb stomped the entire continent by ourselves, so I dunno why we can’t just shank them now. The slithers literally did nothing aside from chill around, maybe blow up a city or two to spite El. It’s ridiculous how the organization who is directly responsible for El’s abuse and trauma has no on screen resolution when frankly, I think the slithers deserve El’s animosity far more than the church. 

Despite my extreme criticism towards El, I want to stress that I don’t hate El. In fact, I love her character a lot and I think she’s really fascinating. However, I think CF really shot her characterization in the foot because it doesn’t feel like El really grew or developed or changed. She stubbornly believed that her actions were right at the beginning and by the end of the game, she still believes her actions were right because the story doesn’t really bother to try and prove her otherwise. I just think she’s much more suited as an antagonist, and I’m excited to see her portrayal in the other routes. Sorry El, I love you, but I would never in a million years side with you.

To end this salt fest on a positive note, I will say the route had three things I enjoyed: the ending, Mercedes and Jeritza’s support, and Edelgard and Lysithea’s support. Seriously, I would not have so many complaints if the rest of the route had the same amount of emotional tension and feeling as El and Lysithea’s support. I enjoyed the ending fairly much; the final battle in the burning city was epic as hell and so was the final cutscene. The scene where El sobs in Byleth’s chest after Byleth’s heart beat returns was extremely touching to me. So because I liked the ending enough, at the very least I was able to finish the play through on a somewhat content note. Also random side note but Edelgard’s seiyuu is amazing.

Anyway my order from favourite to least favourite beagle kids are Dorothea > Edelgard > Ferdie > Bernie > Linhardt > Petra > Hubert > Caspar.

tldr: my experience with crimson flower

All right. All fucking right.

This is a wanky opinion about Edelgard. Please skip or feel free to block me so u won't have to see.

And before you come at me and call me a Dimitri cuck: yes, he's my fave. He's completely bonkers and for the most part acted with the arrogance of a king but without the responsibility of one. He's also something of a centrist, and while Fodlan was fine when he was the ruler, a huge part of that was founded on Dimitri as King instead of any permanent change in Fodlan social and economic structures. Unlike Claude and Edelgard, who both make sure the machine works without them, Dimitri's rule is very much reliant on him. Which is fine, but he isn't immortal. I mean, I get it okay? He's not perfect. Never said he was.

But what really gets my goat is this hand-washing bs that Edelgard does when it comes to the Agarthans. No, I don't hate her. I think she's an interesting character. But there's this tendency to paint her solely as a suffering victim who only wanted to champion the weak and the abused when she was willing enough to swallow misinformation and the lies the Church itself propagated because it suits her purposes?

She's allied with the Agarthans and remained allied with them until the very end of CF. Their defeat was barely a footnote in that route, which is a failure in the part of the game, but also you can't deny they were still working together??

'But she didn't want all those deaths the Agarthans caused either. She had nothing to do with Remire or Duscur.'

No, she's not responsible for any of those events directly but she was their ally. She was happy enough to turn a blind eye on their little experiments and torture because it all gave her an edge in defeating Seiros, because the Church and Seiros are honestly the biggest obstacles to the 'unification of Fodlan' that she wants to do. Faerghus doesn't even have a king and has been weakened by years of Regency (heck the Agarthans have even replaced the real Cornelia, from what it sounds like??). The Alliance is always bickering. But the Church? Has the manpower to resist Adrestian forces. And allying with the Agarthans (who hate Seiros and everything she stands for) just makes victory easier to reach.

'But the Agarthans also tortured her?? And killed her siblings?'

Imagine allying with those people right? Especially after finally wrenching power back from the nobles who betrayed Ionius IX?

So Thales/Arundel pretty much started the Insurrection, which weakened the Emperor's power and made Adrestia easier to control which like fine. Edelgard might not have had enough power as is to cut ties with the Agarthans. Thales made sure of that. But I guess it would be too much to admit that? Never once did Edelgard admit feeling any kind of guilt for being pals with these assholes or even say shit like 'I can't wait to cut my ties with these people'. No, it's always the Church that oppresses people.

And maybe part of it is trauma, that because she's a victim of the Agarthans herself, it's easier for her to focus on the destruction of a different power. Not the one that filled her nights with nightmares.

But we do have to acknowledge that her responses to anything related to the Agarthans are just as powered by madness and trauma as Dimitri's allegations, right?

Did Cornelia and the Agarthans use Anselma/Patricia's desire to go back home as an excuse to kill Lambert and his retinue? Yes. Anselma wasn't to blame, but I mean, she's hardly unrelated to the issue. Just because you didn't personally order people to get killed doesn't mean you're absolved of everything. And that's what gets my goat.

Edelgard constantly paints herself as a victim and as a (vengeful) saviour who brings justice back to the land, but will deny any kind of culpability or responsibility for anything else. Does the game know this? Yes. Caspar calls her out on it and imo people need to listen to Caspar more.

I don't even know where I'm going with this except there are times when Edelgard's actions infuriate the fuck out of me, and I'm just 👀 because are we supposed to just believe her because she has a point?

She's an end justifies the means kind of person and there's nothing wrong with that. Still doesn't absolve her of any of that shit that's happened and she turned a blind eye to. The way she kept taunting Dimitri and chalked it all up to his delusions (when he's in fact mostly correct barring Edelgard's direct physical connection to Duscur) wasn't helping either. Like!!!

With your discussion about unreliable narrators, I'm starting to think FE16's route design was flawed from the get go. If it wants to go for the mystery/questions and answers and unreliable narrator aspect, it should lock 3 of the routes and have one route be a "question" route while the rest could be "answer" routes (kinda like Higurashi if you've read that) instead of having its uwu cake and eating it.

I haven't read Higarushi -

But even if it didn't have unreliable narrators, I think TS pulled it out better (even that nonsense of a golden ending).

It is heavily implied something is shady with Hyzante, but you completely miss it in one route, and sort of miss it in another (no humanoid puppets, but freaky white horsies instead). Gustadolf's nonsense and motivations ? You finally get them in one route, as you outwit him, or in the route you rekt him, but not in the route where you dgaf about the world.

People react to what they see, and when they discover that all (or some) of their thoughts and beliefs don't align with reality.

Now, with FE16...

Unreliable narrators means Church BaD and always BaD, so when you discover the "why" of all the secrecy behind the Church being BaD, it's treated as a sesame seed on a bun (I previously compared the VW reveal to the suprised pikachu face, but surprised pikachu at least had a reaction), and it resumes the uwu.

I mean, this is the reason why I've started to appreciate less and less VW, for the so-called "lore" route, nothing really changes save for a few dialogues, but the end remains the same.

No discussion about "making two different people interact with each other doesn't always end up in roses and daisies sometimes it ends in genocide" or some "sometimes it's better to hide the truth if it means protecting some people", nope, it's the usual Clout-style "out with the old, place to the new".

Can you imagine that the supposed lore-route (I call VW like this, because we learn Rhea's full history about Nabateans, meet Birdie and Nemesis'n'Dudes + Momo) doesn't have Seteth or Flayn react to their enemies??

It's as if you put Cordelia against Gustadolf, and forgot to add a battle quote, what the literal fuck?

I'm more surprised they didn't forget to add a special battle quote between Flayn'n'Seteth when they fight against Indech'n'Macuil, but damn.

Unreliable narration utterly failed in FE16 because uwu means you can't give a fuck about the lore (Nabateans, Duscur, other states, etc etc) else all those Church BaD echoes suddenly lose traction and meaning, and Supreme Leader (and her expy Clout) looks, uh, well, misguided at best.

Imo that's why, even in Nopes, we couldn't have the "answer" or golden route - you can't demolish the uwu like that. At best she becomes Supreme Puppet for people who are, uh, in this kink, but never will anyone tell her that "maybe having pointy ears doesn't mean you are an abject creature with no regards for humanity nor does it disqualifies you from caring about the people".

Tl;dr : The narrators have to remain unreliable in the Fodlan games to support Supreme Leader.

💑 (with Claude)

Send 💑 for a first kiss.

They’ve been dancing around it for some time. Drawing ever closer to the point of no return. Hubert’s nearly made his confession a dozen times. There’s little that should hold him back. The war is behind them, even Fodlan and Almyra have found peace. But Claude is a prince, and Hubert is... less. Less than royal, less than Claude would deserve even if he were not so loved by the people of two lands. 

And yet, even so, Hubert wants. 

The delegation from Almyra has been there for several days, but the visit is coming to a close. Hubert has attempted to say the words lingering in his head nearly a dozen times, but they never manage to reach his lips. Even now, when Claude is to leave tomorrow, Hubert can’t bring himself to say it. They’re sitting across from each other, playing their fifth game of chess. Hubert’s losing. Badly. His thoughts keep drifting, his eyes flitting over Claude’s face rather than the board. 

“I believe you nearly have me.” Taking a breath, he shakes his head and forces himself to rise, crossing to the table on the other side of the room where he pours himself another cup of coffee. It does little to steady his nerves. By the time he turns back around, Claude’s already risen from his seat, suspicion clear on his face. He must know something is off, he’s too clever not to.

“My apologies, it seems my attention has wandered. There... was a matter I wished to discuss with you, but... I can’t seem to find the best way to start.” He grimaces at himself. Coward, that’s what he is. Hubert takes a steadying breath and sets his cup down. Nothing for it. 

He turns and strides toward Claude, perhaps a bit more intimidating than he intends. Stopping just before him, he cups Claude’s face with one hand, glad that the clamminess of his skin is hidden by his glove. “You are... impossible. A distraction. With you here, I can think of little else. It’s infuriating. But, I must ask your forgiveness for this.” 

Before there’s a chance for Claude to speak, Hubert leans in, capturing his lips in a brief kiss. 

Edelgard von "Willfully Ignorant" Hresvelg: without sufficent knowledge of this land's suffering I can't entrust Fodlan to you. Claude: I'm willing to listen to you. Edelgard: Drown in your ideals and die!!!

It's INFURIATING!! And the way the game and the fandom tries to make the war out to be a difference in ideals when this dialogue fuckin' exists!! Cuz when faced with someone with WHAT SHE THINKS are similar ideals to her and who just doesn't have all the facts ACCORDING TO HER OWN FUCKIN' WORDS here, her first reaction isn't "maybe I can work something out with this guy" it's "KILL HIS ASS"!

It's not about fuckin' ideals!! It really isn't! It's about Edelgard thinking that everyone else is just too incompetent or otherwise unfit to rule unlike her and so everyone who tries to stop her from ruling has to be killed or otherwise gotten rid of! Because WE KNOW that's what she thinks about Claude! She thinks he's a clown! She doesn't think he can be a ruler, WHICH WE FIND OUT ON HER ROUTE! But he's a thorn in her side nonetheless which mean he's gettin' hit with the Forever Buh-Bye, similar ideals or not

I don't understand the fans who think Patricia could be Shez's foster mother and want it to be revealed that she was. I can already tell them how that would go:

Cornelia: "The woman who raised you was actually Edelgard's mother/Dimitri's stepmother!" Dun dun dun!

And then it's never mentioned again.

Patricia's an empty mystery box.

TBH I sort of get how infuriating it is to have Barney's mom mentionned in passing but nothing ever came out of that plot point, because, being interesting in useless things Fodlan games don't want to explore is why I'm still blogging about those games lol

Take Citrus, we knew in the base game (SS) that she was one of Rhea's artificial being to bring Sothis, and we had to wait for the DLC to learn her name and more than just "she was a homonculi who died in childbirth" (even if that "more" is relative).

Barney and their mom are complete mysteries, were they raised by Cleobulus, a random NPC, Patricia herself, who knows...

I wouldn't say she's an empty mystery box, because she plays a role in Dimitri's tragedy and explains some things about Adrestia and Supreme Leader (who is in denial about her Mother being a concubine and not Ionius's twu luf! - if Supreme Leader is in denial about this despite knowing best, what does it mean for the rest of her beliefs?).

Sadly, for all the "deep politics" (tm), the Fodlan games dgaf about Patricia, when she could have been, frankly, a treasure trove for more serious interesting AUs, instead of the WTF about her life being ignored to avoid developing Supreme Leader so she could only pander to the self insert.

Imagine for a second the shitstorm that should have happened if it was known the Faerghus King married the Emperor's concubine and one of the Emperor's daughters was residing in the Royal castle? Forget "sheltering refugees is a casus belli" nonsense Nopes tries to sell, you could make all sorts of AUs where Adrestia declares war on Faerghus for, idk, "abducting" the Emperor's wife (not the official one though!) and daughter - even if Arundel, still siding with Ludwig, ran away to Faerghus for a certain reason...

In Nopes, we don't even know what is Barney, a 100% human, a mixed race human-agarthan (since Solon makes it clear he doesn't see Ignatz as a human like him), an Agarthan, a construct, idk. Barney and Larva are so bland, you'd think they were only the tip of a giant iceberg, but upon closer inspection, they're just the tip of a half melt ice cube.