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arkus-rhapsode · 1 year

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Rambling about my anxieties about a potential FE4 Remake

So recently an interview with the developers of FE Engage had come out and it shed some interesting facts about the development like how it was meant for the 30th anniversary, it was being made at the same time as 3H and that the game was delayed for greater polish.

Now that might not seem at all extraordinary after all, if you were like me, the OG leaker for Engage basically said that all. But here’s the thing, not only is this behind the scenes look legitimizing more of the leaker’s insights, but that means there is an even higher potential of their claim that an FE4 remake is more believable.

Now its no secret that FE Genealogy of the Holy War is one of the most anticipated Fire Emblems to receive a remake treatment like Echoes and why wouldn’t it be? After all, its still the most popular FE in Japan and is considered to be Kaga’s magnum opus and the best of the Famicom era FE. It was also never brought over to the West legally so this’ll be FE fans chances to see it in its full glory. Hell, Im excited as all hell to see FE4 remade on modern consoles, but then I sorta stopped and began to think about it for a bit. Namely, could an FE4 remake ever live up to the hype?

Now look, any old FE getting remade should happen. Especially those never officially translated. It gives others in the fandom the chance to experience the game with modern convince and not be scared off by emulation. But just for a moment I thought what a remade FE4 would even look like.

Now Im sure anyone who played Echoes knows it is possibly one of the best produced FE’s ever. Its in game art was amazing, the sprites actually resembled people more than Awakening or Fates, fully voice acted, it was amazing. It was amazing by the standards of a 3DS. Its no secret FE has gone through a transitional period from the 3DS to the Switch. The flat 2D sprites are now 3D models and convos that took place on map painting backgrounds with character art laid onto of it, is now 3D models speaking in an open space. I think what every FE fan genuinely wants is for Fire Emblem to look the best it can on the console its on. Now Engage clearly has shown FE can look better than it ever has on switch, but it still leaves a lot to be desired. This is a console that’s 1st and 2nd parties can achieve visuals like breath of the wild, Kirby Lost World, and Xenoblade. So I don’t think its impossible to make pretty games on a switch. But FE and Insys really haven’t gone all the way to where is feels quite like its a next gen FE visually. And not to put all the blame on InSys, but I understand that even fans are split. Some will never be happy if we don’t get back to the old pixel art style and found it more visually appealing while others want to put the capabilities of FE on a home console. Any creative director is not gonna manage to appeal to both these sides and that’s honestly going to suck.

Now, this isn’t just about graphics but lets also talk about mechanics. Its no doubt that FE4 has some legendary map design, as well as the precursor to the support system we have now. But it was a clearly unbalanced FE, cavalry has always been OP but this is the game where literally cavalry is the best. The map design is also pretty different. I know GBA era fans probably are used to the concept of an FE plot unfolding on a battlefield as opposed to more chapter long encounter then story cutscene as more modern FE, but if people forget, the maps in FE4 were huge with multiple narrative events occurring in a single map. So how do translate that? Do you get rid of the huge maps and make FE4 more like modern FE and break into smaller maps with cutscene driven stories? Engage has shown a willingness to use more cinematics than ever before, would that help moments like Sigurd’s father dying or the feeling of Quan arriving only to be ambushed? Personally, I don’t think so as moments like that make FE4 so remembered. The immersive moments of in real time plot elements playing out. Once again we arrive at some where I can’t really see how you’d do this without disappointing one end of the spectrum.

And then we have the support system. I feel pretty confident in saying that an FE4 remake will use the modernized FE support system. But as we’ve seen in Echoes, just because it may use the same system, doesn’t mean it’ll be like Awakening, Fates, or 3H level deep. Echoes support system was incredibly limited despite coming off of the more robust Fates. And As I’m sure you all recall, scaling back social sim elements are never really met with positivity like FE Engage walking back things from 3H. Im sure they’ll still let you pick who you end up with Seliph, after all he isn’t locked into an ending like Sigurd or Alm, but I am unsure if we’ll get the modernized support system we are so accused to getting retrofitted into an older game.

Oh my god are they even going to do turn wheel?

Okay okay moving away from the gameplay portion, the last thing that worries the fact any remake of FE4 has to live up to a near monolithic reputation. FE4 is an FE that never made it the states and the only way to experience it forever was through emulation and a fan translation. This lack of availability that seemed to only be accessed by die hard FE fans willing to play the Famicom era games while also being told to other western fans that this is Japan’s favorite FE coupled with things that more modern fans would recognize like FE4 serving as the inspiration for a lot of 3H has essentially mythologized FE4 as “The Greatest Fire Emblem Game”. Now this is my personal opinion but FE4 isn’t my favorite FE, nor is it one I consider the best written, but it is certainly an operatic entry that goes beyond what FE had ever done up to the point with moments that deserve to be apart of FE history. And do you see what I’m getting at here? Any remake of FE4 has sky high expectations to clear. It was a meme forever that FF7 Remake was taking forever, but we all know that if it was nothing less than beyond perfect, then FF7R would never live up to the hype. FE4 is very likely going to be in that situation and Im not 100% sure InSys can deliver if that’s the case.

Now look, maybe this is all just pointless lizard brain fear. I would love nothing more than to see and FE4 that flawlessly captured the spirt of the original while looking great, playing great, and living up to the bar of social simulation. I think that’s all any fan genuinely wants out of any FE game. But it just fills me with dread knowing the near herculean task the FE development team may be tasked with, and that even more fans who have never experienced FE4 are going to now have to see how “The Best FE” holds up to modern standards.

The potential of this remake ever happening is still not set in hard stone as of the writing. So there really is no point worrying about something before it even has a chance to materialize. But I do believe that any FE4 remake will now be facing a lot of up hill battles and while I’m not using that to protect poor game design (If the game plays or looks like ass I will call it out) I do hope that people think about what an FE4 remake really does mean.

#fire emblem #rambling #fire emblem genealogy of the holy war #fe4

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patricia-von-arundel · 1 year

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I was a bit bummed out by Engage but with all your post on it I tried the older FE games, and it's really great so far! Do you have any recommendations or favorite characters? :D

Nice! I'm loving Engage, but that's very related to (1) nostalgia, and (2) liking a game more battle-focused after Three Houses' story-focus. (It's nice to have best of both worlds on one system!) What have you started playing?

If you're just looking to learn the ropes of FE gameplay, both FE7 (just "Fire Emblem" outside of Japan, the first released elsewhere) and Awakening are decent starting points for the general structure. Both also have really solid characters and simple-but-fun plots (which are handled without the over-the-top dramatics of Engage). FE7 outside of Japan has added intro chapters to help players get used to the genre (where your "lord" is Lyn, before Eliwood and Hector are introduced as the lords for the original game). The translation is a little uneven sometimes (and sloppy at others), but it's a very solid introduction if you have access to a GBA/DS/DSLite (or want to emulate).

Awakening is easier to get access to (since it's more recent and on 3DS), and is also a nice, solid intro to FE gameplay. It also has more bonus maps/DLC that extend gameplay and let you nab extra characters (both from older games and from Awakening itself). Honestly, Awakening seems likely to remain my favorite game in the series: it's just all-around fun. Good plot (if not a complex one), great characters (and DLC to flesh them out more), fun gameplay, multiple difficulty options, and some DLC that lets you obtain ways to boost levels/supports/money/weapons/classes, if you're into that. I've put in close to 1,000 hours in Awakening - due to the support system, there are all sorts of ways to mess around with how you play the game and use certain characters.

Sacred Stones (FE8, the second released outside of Japan for GBA) is a lot of fun, and has a brief route split if you like to play more than once, but if you want to try a GBA game, FE7 is probably the better starting point, for the Lyn chapters. (Especially because managing the convoy and items is clunky in the GBA games compared to later ones, so the intro chapters help before you have to figure out inventory management and gameplay!)

Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn (on Gamecube and Wii, respectively) had the most complex plot since Genealogy of the Holy War (which was not released outside of Japan). The problem with them is that they are all but impossible to track down for a reasonable price - both bombed spectacularly at release, so copies are scarce. Emulation is usually the way newcomers to the series go if they want to tackle the Radiant games.

Shadow Dragon is a remake of the very first game, but it hardly added anything beyond updated portraits and battlefield grids so you don't accidentally wander somewhere where you'll get your butt kicked if you mathed wrong. 😅 It's on DS, and I'm honestly not sure how easy it is to find now. It sold so poorly that FE12 (a remake of FE3, Mystery of the Emblem) once again was Japan-only. Which sucks, because FE12 actually beefed up characters and plot! Shadow Dragon would be a good place to get the hang of gameplay, but its story is more Final Fantasy 1 than Final Fantasy 6. 🤷‍♀️

If you can't find (or emulate) FE7, Awakening is a solid place to start. It eases you into gameplay, lets you grind (either for free, especially if you play on Normal, or with paid DLC), lets you choose Casual (no permadeath - characters come back next chapter if "killed") or Classic (permadeath - pick a god and pray) and has, in purely mathematical terms, an epic buttload of characters to choose from if some *cough*Vaike*cough* aren't to your liking. Just, uh... listen to Severa. Trust me. Listen. To. Severa. You can thank me later.

Fates has fuuuuuun battles and some really amusing joke weapons (it's Azura with the broom! But wait - wait! She's out, she's out, Jakob came in from the side with pebbles! Victory! Victory to the angry butler!!! 😱), but the plot and some other stuff is... well. The monkeys with typewriters were going to manage Shakespeare, but then they ate too many pot brownies and we got Fates instead. Have fun killing goo daddy with your flaming chainsaw sword! Fates also has three different routes, which can be a bit confusing if you don't know how they differ. (Birthright is the "easy" route, Conquest will kick your ass six ways from Sunday and add a seventh kick at chapter 10, and Revelation was written frantically after the monkeys demanded a union and walked out of the job.)

Shadows of Valentia is the last of the 3DS games, and a remake of the second game (Gaiden, never released outside of Japan). It's... weird. Fully voiced, which is very cool (especially since the cast is solid), and has some interesting twists on the FE formula (like dungeons and Mila's Turnwheel, which lets you go back a number of turns without having to restart the whole map), but the plot remains pretty early-90s-JRPG, and they opted to keep in a fuckton of water maps and desert maps that are insanely tedious. Reclassing also feels a bit clunky after the relative freedom of Awakening and Fates. It's definitely well done, but I wouldn't recommend it as an intro to the series.

Same goes for Three Houses: except for the way the battlefield functions, it is very different from the other games. It is darker, attempts more complexity than it should have (at the expense of some plotpoints left dangling in all routes), and has four different routes that, with one exception, force you to choose the route after a single battle and barebones intro to the characters. It also has a loooooot of stuff you can micromanage and/or waste time on and a weird (by FE standards) recruitment system. Great game, all four routes, but a little more than Intelligent Systems could juggle. (This is especially obvious if you pick the Black Eagles.) It's also quite easy, by FE standards, outside of some paralogues (side battles) and the DLC (which was very, very simple compared to Awakening, Fates, and Shadows of Valentia, though a lot of fun if you like a challenge!).

Awakening, Fates, Shadows of Valentia, and Three Houses (like Engage) all give you a choice of male or female avatar, and Casual or Classic mode. (Fates also has Phoenix mode, but ew. No. Bad.) All also have DLC. With DLC in mind, remember that the 3DS eShop goes down for new purchases as of the end of March of this year. If you get Awakening, Fates, or Shadows of Valentia, buy the DLC now if you think you'll want it! (It adds new characters, new weapons, some additional lore and/or character development, and some silly stuff like beach chapters. 🤣)

Honestly, if Engage is all you've tried, I'd say go with Awakening (the game Lucina is from) or FE7 (where, as mentioned above, Lyn is from). Your call! Both are good intros without so much management and bloat they get overwhelming. And none of the choices you make will drastically alter the rest of the game! Awakening should also still be easy to find, compared to what came before.

Favorite characters? Pegasus knight has been my favorite class since I started playing, and my all-time favorite character is Cordelia. I also love Ninian, Rebecca, Lyn, Serra (all from FE7), Eirika, Seth, L'arachel, Lute (all from FE7), the Whitewings (Palla, Catria, and Est, who are in FE1, 2, 3, 11, 12, and 15), Caeda (FE1, 3, 11, and 12), Nephenee (FE9, 10) Olivia, Inigo, Severa, Lucina (FE13), Laslow, Selena, Soleil, Reina, Flora, Jakob (FE14), Mathilda, Clair, Mae, Boey (FE15), Edelgard, Dimitri, Hapi, Lysithea, Constance, Ingrid, Seteth, FERDINAND VON AEGIR (FE16), and I'm still deciding on the new game, but Chloé and Etie are great thus far in what I've played. If I had to pick top three of all time, I'd probably go with Cordelia, Inigo/Laslow, and Edelgard.

There are a handful of spin-off games (Fire Emblem Heroes, two Warriors games, and Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE), but they're all very different from the core of Fire Emblem proper. Fun, but not a good intro to the series (and like Engage, they rely on knowledge of past games/characters).

Longest answer ever, but I hope it helps you figure out which way you'd like to go next! You may enjoy Engage more when you know the Emblems better. 😁

Happy strategizing!

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canonical-transformation · 1 year

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"why do they let characters die to a 2% crit in the tutorial maps?" [A'lear part 2]

So it turns out the dragon is Queen Lumera, ruler of Lythos and A'lear's mother. Lumera is overjoyed to see her daughter awake again after her thousand year slumber, and despite the latter's missing memories, it's a happy reunion.

A'lear takes a moment to admire a pigeon (wow, a pigeon!) and grab some acorns from the ground. It's possible this is just instinctive dragon hoarding behaviour. It's very adorable.

Queen Lumera turns back into a giant dragon and offers them all a ride on her back. They head to her castle.

Exposition time: there are five nations in Elyos. The four human nations, arranged in a ring, are Flowers, Mountains, Snow, and Desert. (Or spring, autumn, winter, and summer, if you prefer. The world map animates falling leaves over the mountain biome.) In the centre of the map lies, Lythos, home of the Divine Dragons — well, the Divine Dragon, singular, last of her kind right up until A'lear woke up this morning.

(oh and there was also a huuuuge landmass where the Fell Dragon ruled, but that's sealed beneath the waves, never to be seen again, never ever.)

A thousand years ago, the Fell Dragon Sombron appeared out of nowhere and fought the Divine Dragons for control of the Twelve Emblems. Once every thousand years, the Twelve Emblems can combine their power to do Plot Device Magic. Last time, they were used to seal the Fell Dragon Sombron away.

Isn't this just the plot of Shadow Dragon and The Sacred Stones?, wonders A'lear.

No, not at all, says Lumera. You see, the Emblems aren't just magic gems; they're magical glowy avatars based on Lords/protagonists from prior Fire Emblem games. It's kind of like cross-marketing — Sigurd fans will want to buy this game to see him, and others meeting him for the first time here will be hyped for the inevitable Genealogy of the Holy War remake.

Who's Sigurd?, asks A'lear.

We'll get to him soon, my child, says Lumera. He's really fun to use in this game, you're going to love him.

So... this is like Fire Emblem Heroes?, asks A'lear.

Well, not exactly like FEH—, says Lumera.

Oh, of course. It's like Fire Emblem Heroes but there's no gacha?

Good gracious!, it's time for training!, says Lumera.

Chapter 2

It's time for training! Lumera summons some Fabrications — glowy humanoid figures with empty eyes, who, she hastens to explain, are totally not like the Corrupted because they're blue instead of red. They're here for a mock battle.

On my first attempt at this level, an archer scores a 2% critical hit on Clanne, instantly felling him. He bleeds out before a distraught A'lear, whimpering garbled nonsense, while Lumera stands nearby and kindly tells her daughter that she must learn to face her fears, even the fear of those under your care dying in your arms. The real enemy, after all, will not hold back.

Anyway, I reset the chapter.

The second time round, the archer does not crit, and merely sticks an arrow through Clanne's ribs, which his sister immediately heals with magic staff magic.

This map is designed to introduce two key mechanics for this game: Break and Chain Guard.

Break is this game's take on the classic Weapon Triangle, which now uses the same coloured icons as in FEH and looks great. Landing attacks with weapon advantage (sword < lance < axe < sword; daggers/bows/tomes < martial arts) will break the opponent's guard(*), letting your next attack on them go uncountered. It's great for seeing up your glass cannons — let your high-dodge swordmaster chip down the big Handaxe beserker, then your own zero-defense mage can fling a few fireballs safely.

Chain Guard is only available on certain classes: Martial Monk (generic healer), Martial Master (generic healer plus master seal), and Dancer (dancer). These "Qi Adept" units can go into a guard stance, blocking a single hit on behalf of an adjacent ally, and losing 20% HP in the process. Often this is not worth it, but sometimes having your healer go down to 15/25HP saves their 45HP allies from fatal damage.

In my opinion, the coolest thing about Qi Adepts are that these dedicated healer classes can occasionally pull their weight via damage prevention instead—explicitly with Chain Guard; implicitly when they're roundhouse kicking an enemy mage in the face—making them more flexible.

The second coolest thing is that enemy healers are now an active concern on player phase, often standing in the right position to prevent damage — or even a break! — against a boss.

Framme and Clanne help take care of some Fabrications, leaving most of the EXP to A'lear, who handily reaches Level 3. Lumera takes the field, but is defeated with the power of teamwork.

So then she sets up a second drill, in which she pulls out all the stops.

Meet Sigurd of Grannvale, from FE4: Genealogy of the Holy War. When equipped, Emblem Sigurd grants Mov+1 and Canter(**). When Engaged, Sigurd grants an additional Mov+5/6/7 depending on class. That means that if you're playing this level for the first time and you're not counting carefully, the UI will be telling you that Lumera's attack range ends waaaaay over there, and then Lumera will suddenly sprint eleven tiles — ⅔-way across the map — and take out most of Vander's HP with Ridersbane.

Luckily, this is my second run on the game, and I am counting carefully, so Framme is ready with a chain guard.

"Wow, what a powerful Emblem!" Vander says sycophantically, as Lumera's attempted 20 damage to him becomes a very underwhelming 6 damage to Framme.

Then Clanne sets the Queen on fire, Vander whacks her with an axe, and A'lear finishes the job.

Lumera offers A'lear a ring. It's the gift she promised A'lear as a birthday present, one thousand years ago. A'lear refuses the gift for now: she doesn't remember anything from back then, so it feels like receiving a gift meant for someone else. Perhaps if Lumera waits until A'lear gets her memories back?

Okay, it's a promise.

Lumera is so proud of her daughter. She's so happy to be reunited. They're going to have so much time together now, and make so many happy memories.

And on that note, with her most important wisdom imparted, and promises made for the long future they'll have together, Queen Lumera gifts A'lear her own sword, and says she's so proud of her and she'll see her in the morning.

She then monologues to herself about all the idyllic times she and A'lear have ahead of them. Then proceeds to leave Sigurd with mysterious instructions offscreen.

Truly, all of Queen Lumera's affairs are in order. I guess she's going to bed, and will see A'lear in the morning?

Idk, something feels off here.

-----

(* Was considering Photoshopping a FEH trailer image for the following wall of text, but can't be bothered. The new mechanics work approximately as follows.

When a unit initiates combat with weapon advantage and damages foe, foe cannot counterattack, and after combat, inflict [Break] on that Foe until their next action.

[Break]: "Unit can't counterattack. Remove [Break] at end of combat."

Chain Guard: When a foe initiates combat against an adjacent ally and would hit that ally, instead unit loses 20% HP and ally is not damaged by that attack. Activate only at full HP. Chain Guard ends when it's triggered, or when unit loses HP, or when unit is next active.)

(** Canter — move up to two spaces after acting — is almost universally a safe pick for skill inheritance, regardless of unit or class. However, it costs 10 levels worth of SP and occupies one of two skill slots, so it's not always the best choice, especially in the early game where SP is scarce. (Disclaimer: I'm not an expert. Feigning certainty makes for more succinct writing.))

#apostrophe a'lear liveblog #fe engage #fire emblem engage #fire emblem spoilers #playing engage

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asphodelis · 9 days

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Hello! I’m a big fan of Fire Emblem Genealogy of the Holy War and I love your art! Just wanted to see if you do commissions? Been wanting to commission Osawa manga panel redraws of one of my DnD characters that’s based off of Deirdre!

HI!!! I'm so glad you like my art <3 I'm really really sorry but right now I have next to no free time on my hands :( If I scrounge up some time during summer, I'll let you (and everyone else) know!

#asph: not art #asph: ask

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cat-denied · 1 year

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I posted 1,857 times in 2022

That's 1,857 more posts than 2021!

24 posts created (1%)

1,833 posts reblogged (99%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@catgirldick

@orcboxer

@magicalballerinaprincess

@gravitonbeamemitter

@natalieironside

I tagged 841 of my posts in 2022

#roadtripfaves - 178 posts

#goncharov - 55 posts

#art - 54 posts

#holy shit - 34 posts

#roadtriprefs - 32 posts

#fire emblem - 25 posts

#comic - 21 posts

#guilty gear - 21 posts

#fe3h - 19 posts

#<3 - 15 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#which is a red & black plaid flannel (it's just a collared shirt but whatever) buttoned up under a black pleather vest (also buttoned up) an

My Top Posts in 2022:

the next time a piece of fucking software forces me to choose between “yes” and “maybe later” i’m shooting it right between the eyes

4 notes - Posted November 9, 2022

👻🎁✨ :)

👻 What is your wildest headcanon?

My wildest headcanon? That's a hard one. I don't really do a lot of headcanoning! Mostly I just turn stuff into actual fanfic rather than just headcanoning it, and so I keep a layer of separation between the canon and my fic, if that makes sense. I guess I have a lot of headcanons of Fire Emblem characters being lesbians in canon even while not strictly defined as such (like Minerva and Palla in fe11), but those are usually pretty common ones.

Here's a couple of headcanons for you:

Nico Minoru (of Marvel's Runaways and others) realized she was bisexual while on the team of A-FORCE (2016), i.e. while surrounded by gorgeous and powerful women. Because come on. (Context: in the original Runaways series from the early 2000s, Nico was portrayed as straight: in the new Runaways series from 2018, she had since realized her bisexuality.)

In Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War, only characters who are lovers and characters with the Thief class can exchange gold. I think this is because the Thief (Dew in the first gen, Patty or Daisy in the second) characters happen to be people who deeply love all their friends.

I also headcanon...pretty much everyone as trans and/or gay. If I like them (especially for Fire Emblem, where characters often have very little character at all) they get the "YOU ARE GAY NOW" seal of approval.

Oh, here's a real wild one! Wolf (from Fire Emblem 11) is a trans woman! This is because YOU saw her and went "she's a girl" and I went "okay" and rolled with it. This may come up in my fanfic sometime, who can say

Putting the rest of this behind a read more because it got long.

🎁 Have a piece of a WIP you want to share?

I do! Here's a section from the first chapter of a Minerva/Palla haunted house AU I've been working on in the background.

The room is soaked in dust. At one point in time it had probably been a bedroom, and indeed a bed frame rots grayly in the corner. Rather than any mattress, however, it’s covered in boxes: boxes which have sprawled out to take over the rest of the room like an invasive species of plant. The walls are bare. The edge of the room’s one window can just be made out, the rest of it totally obscured by still more boxes. They stack five feet high easily, and though Palla is tall enough to circumnavigate the undergrowth they form with ease, and Catria at least tall enough to manage, Est can barely see over the box in front of her, and she complains loudly at this. Catria argues lightly back, and Palla smiles under her breath as she makes her way around, simply looking.

None of the boxes are labeled: the lower ones have more the look of trunks, and Palla idly wonders when cardboard had been invented, whether this was someone else’s reshuffling of the Macedons’ remaining possessions after their departure. She cracks open the nearest top box to find stacks of books: unlabeled volumes in that old style you would see on the shelves of houses that had become museums. Carefully opening one, then another, to their title pages, she sees that they are books of strategy: for warfare and diplomacy. Interesting.

I just love the Whitewings and Macedon and all that jazz! Also I should write more of this, I was having a load of fun with it.

✨️ Out of the comments you’ve received on your fics, what are two or three of your favorites?

! I love to receive any comments because it tells me that people enjoyed my work enough to tell me about it, and when you write for fandoms that are as relatively obscure as I do (in terms of fanworks), every little bit counts for a lot! The exception to the obscure fandoms of course is the Goncharov fic I wrote, which became hugely popular and now I'm considering writing a second chapter or sequel, just because of the absolutely hogwild response.

Here's a coupla specifics:

"Always happy to see the Nagi tag get a little bigger, and you have a fascinating version of her here! I thought your interpretation of the setting was brilliant and you really brought out the nuances of the characters you portrayed just before such a climactic final battle." from Oricalle on my fic Meetings, Manifestations, and Manaketes. (I have a lot of fun naming my fics.) They left this comment after I read through some of their works and left some comments, which made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Every comment on my Goncharov fic for being brilliantly in on the joke, but especially this one from tinuviel_tinuviel:

because not only did they call me out by name (blushes), but when I read and commented on one of their Locked Tomb fics, they called me out on it:

See the full post

4 notes - Posted December 1, 2022

i think the best fire emblem game names are the jugdral ones, i.e. Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War and Fire Emblem: Thracia 776. let’s break this down.

1. Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War

this one rules firstly because it’s really long and weird. in a series with game names that evoke fantasy tropes and magic (like “blazing blade” and “shadow dragon” and “sacred stones”, or even something like “path of radiance,” or “mystery of the emblem,” which could be a nancy drew novel title), this game name easily stands out the most in the list. like okay, fantasy, fantasy, mystery, magic, artefacts...Genealogy. you know what i associate genealogy with?? my mom looking at ancestry dot com for fun and trying to collate our family history a few years back. i do NOT associate it with magic boys with swords and tragedy and pseudo-medieval political machinations. too bad that’s what you get!

secondly? it’s fully accurate. i mean i know game names are usually relevant to their games (because otherwise whats the fuckin point) but like. “shadow dragon and the blade of light” specifically calls out 1 character (the shadow dragon) and 1 magic artifact (the blade of light). three houses is about 3 houses but you only pick one of them and the only relevance it has to the story is “you pick between 3 groups” and “there are 3 groups in the game that fight each other.” big deal. that’s also true of, like, arguments i have with my family over what game we want to play at thanksgiving.

genealogy of the holy war? you cannot escape the fact that this game is a genealogy of a holy war. 100% of the game is dedicated to being a genealogy of a holy war. (if you’re not familiar: the first half of the game follows a dude named Sigurd as he gets embroiled in political conspiracy as a scapegoat by an evil cult that’s manipulating the government. the second half follows his son (and the kids of all his friends from the first generation) some ~20 years later as they go and fight the evil cult that’s now fully taken over the government.) you wield weapons blessed by your gods and use them to defeat a cult that wields dark magic and a weapon blessed by their (evil) god. this war is really fuckin holy. and hey two generations (AND the pairings in the first generation alter the stats of kids in the second) where it matters who your parents are - thats a genealogy baby! we did it! that’s the name of the game! and it’s Everywhere.

2. Fire Emblem: Thracia 776

what the fuck. what the fuck is this. “thracia”?? that isn’t a real word. all the other fire emblem titles are real words. why is 776 there?? is it seven hundred seventy six?? is it 7:76, the worst time of the day?? is it like 7.76?? it’s the fifth game in the series!! not the 776th one!! no other fire emblem games have numbers in the titles!! what the fuck is going on!?!?

10/10. no notes.

10 notes - Posted November 19, 2022

HEY how come there’s only ONE other goncharov fanfic on ao3???? seriously??? this movie was REVELATORY and it came out 49 years ago i mean what the fuck!

so here’s a little katya/sofia ficlet to remedy that, and to bring more attention to my girls!! love a problematic lesbian relationship

this is set just after the boat scene!! because how else could katya have gotten bandaged up after that if sofia didn’t do it, right

13 notes - Posted November 19, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

See the full post

15 notes - Posted December 3, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review #i think its rly funny that my post about my goncharov fanfic has like 13 notes #and my goncharov fanfic has like. 2k hits

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kdoto · 3 years

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Drawing Beowulf vs drawing Holyn

#Fire Emblem #Fire Emblem 4 #fire emblem genealogy of the holy war #Fire emblem beowulf #fire emblem holyn #fire emblem chulainn #honestly I just made shit up and called it a day this is based on next to nothing from official content

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four-loose-screws · 2 years

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The Wind Mage - FE4 Short Story Translation - Section 1

If you would like to start from the beginning, read a missed part, etc., click here!

FE Game Script Translations - FE Novel Translations - Original FE Support Conversations

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———————————

The Wind Mage

Short Story #1 of Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War - The Forested Land of the Lake, by Ginichiro Suzuki

Section 1

Claud, High Priest of Edda, knew.

That Sigurd's army would lose the Battle of Belhalla, and that all of the leaders of the continent and their next-in-line would die.

The Valkyrie Staff had told him so.

He still went to the palace with Sigurd and the others anyway.

'I am not one who can take action. Even if I go, I cannot defeat a single enemy soldier. But I want to see with my own eyes what parts of the future the staff did not show me. And if there is something that goes down the wrong path, then it is my duty as the descendant of one of the Crusaders to right it.'

"Tell all units to capture the traitor Sigurd and everyone with him!" Arvis ordered, and the Roten Ritter attacked Sigurd's army.

Sigurd's army immediately fought back, and fought well, killing many of the Grannvalian soldiers.

Yet no matter how great their spirit, the enemy outnumbered them a hundred times over.

'Gods… are you really allowing such a terrible event to transpire…?' Claud prayed to the Valkyrie Staff.

But it did not respond to him.

Soldiers died one after the other before his eyes.

'This is the wrong path.' The moment he had that thought, Claud realized the role he had been given to play.

He gripped the staff, and prayed. 'Gods, I accept what is happening around me right now. But no matter how I look at it, I know it is wrong. Please do whatever you must to right this wrong sometime in the future. Take my life, so that love and justice may prevail one day…'

The gem set upon the top of the staff began to glow.

'Ah… Thank you for accepting my prayer. With this, I have completed my duty. Please take my life now.'

And then...

The green dragon Forseti, sleeping beside a glacier within Silesse's central mountain range, felt the Valkyrie Staff's signal, and opened his eyes.

The green dragon sensed that a descendant of Ced, to whom he'd given his blood, was in danger, and immediately sent power to him.

Suddenly, Lewyn felt a strange power flow through his body.

'I cannot die. There are things I must do.'

Though those words had been nothing more than what he told himself, they changed to true conviction.

Lewyn walked forward as he unleashed a Forseti spell that did not end.

The air condensed, and in the next moment, unleashed its enormous energy, pulverizing enemy soldiers and scattering the remaining bits of their bodies in every direction.

'I cannot die.'

Though he didn't realize it, at some point, Lewyn was now the only one fighting.

Several burning scorching hot boulders all fell at once, aiming for him. But a strange power seemed to be moving above his head, as the boulders changed course ever so slightly, and not one hit him.

"What can one man alone do to us?! All units, swarm and attack him!" Arvis shouted."

At that same moment, a harsh wind blew across the battlefield.

Its ferocity was comparable to the winds of the cyclones that hit the Miletos Region every summer.

All of the flags were ripped out of the flag bearers' hands, and blew away. The cavaliers fell one after the other from their horses, and even the armored infantry only just barely managed to stay standing.

Dirt, sand, and rocks the size of children's fists all flew around in the air.

Everyone closed their eyes, curled up their bodies, and tried to weather the fierce winds.

It stopped as suddenly as it had started.

When the soldiers relaxed and stood back up, they couldn't believe their own eyes.

The mage and last standing member of the rebel army had vanished.

ー

Lewyn was standing in the middle of a grassy field.

Though he'd been surrounded by about ten or twenty Grannvalian armored knights, they were now nowhere to be seen.

'What happened?'

When the fierce wind had been blowing, Lewyn felt his body rising into the air.

He remembered up until the moment he realized he was pulled into the cyclone, but he didn't know at all what happened after that.

When he came to, he was standing alone in the field.

'Where am I?' Lewyn looked around.

A long distance away from his right was a castle.

He recognized the shape of the castle wall and watchtower.

'That's Lubeck Castle, isn't it? If that's the case, then it means I've returned home to Silesse.'

When he got closer to the building, he knew for sure that it was indeed Lubeck Castle.

About one month ago, when Sigurd's army had attacked this castle, Lewyn blew the gate to pieces with a Forseti spell. It had quickly been repaired, but much of the aftermath of the damage still remained.

The soldier standing atop the gate saw Lewyn, and said in surprise, "That's Prince Lewyn! What happened? Why are you alone…?"

"We lost the battle."

'If you can even call it a battle.' Lewyn thought bitterly.

"You lost…?"

"Yes, we did. Prince Sigurd was killed during it. And not just Prince Sigurd, but everyone else aside from me…"

"How could this be…?"

"Grannvale will probably close in on this castle soon. Please close the gate again quickly."

"Y-Yes, Your Highness!"

"Please let me in to take a short rest."

"Yes Your Highness, please enter! ...Hey, open up the gate!!"

His nerves had been on edge since early morning, and he was thoroughly exhausted. There was still time before the sun set, but he got into bed and quickly fell asleep.

ー

The next morning after breakfast, he gave his orders to the commander of the defense unit, then left for Silesse Castle.

'I wonder if Erinys was able to get away safely.' Lewyn thought. 'She must have. She promised me that if anything unusual happened, she would avoid fighting and run away. That I won't die, so she won't die, either. If she had, then I would have died back there. But a miracle occurred, and I didn't. Erinys wouldn't be the only one to die.'

With each step he took towards Silesse, the exact same thought ran through Lewyn's mind.

'Erinys is safe. She has to be.'

ー

Six days later, in the afternoon, he was standing atop the hill that overlooked the Silesse Castle of his childhood nostalgia.

'Ah, I'm finally home.'

When he looked at it, he saw a single pegasus slowly circling the skies above the castle.

'It's Erinys!' Lewyn waved his arms as hard as he could. 'Pegasus knights can all see very well from far away. She must know it's me.'

The pegasus stopped moving in circles, turned towards Lewyn, and flew straight towards him.

"Erinys!" He called out, and rushed towards her.

The pegasus shifted to a low altitude glide, and quickly landed nearby.

The green haired knight jumped down to the ground. "Lord Lewyn!"

The two ran up to each other and hugged each other as tightly as they could.

Though they had only been apart for seven days, it felt as if it had been several years.

After holding each other for a long moment and exchanging several kisses, Erinys buried her face in her beloved's chest and said, "You're alive!"

"Of course I am. I would never break a promise, would I?"

ー

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fireemblemtcg · 3 years

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Cipher By The Numbers: A Statistical Look Back at the Game That Was

Eight months have now passed since the final Fire Emblem Cipher card series was released. Out of interest, let us quickly analyse the complete game and see how it breaks down. Who made it in? Who is still missing? Who got the most? Who got the least? Who drew the most? How does it stack up to the various other spinoffs and crossover events that Fire Emblem has been involved in in terms of sheer coverage? And other bits of mostly meaningless trivia.

This post is adapted from a twitter thread published in October 2020. Some of the presented numbers slightly differ compared to it, as I’ve since refined my methods somewhat.

More Fire Emblem Cipher translations!

Part 1: The Standings by Symbol

The Most Common Symbol(s)

It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that generally speaking, the more Fire Emblem games a symbol affiliation needed to represent, the more cards there are in that symbol. The most common symbol is Purple (Legendary Weapons), which covers three games and a smattering of manga characters; Red (Blade of Light), covering the casts of Archanea and Valentia plus a handful of Tokyo Mirage Sessions characters, is the runner-up.

One thing stands out, though. Unlike other Fire Emblem games, which each get just one symbol that is usually shared with another game, Fates is in the unique position of having three different, closely related symbol configurations dedicated exclusively to that single game: White (Hoshido), Black (Nohr), and the dual White/Black configuration. Individually these three are nothing to write home about in terms of frequency, but if taken together...

...Then they immediately become the most common by a very substantial margin. This is a major recurring trend with Fates content in Cipher: through a combination of Cipher effectively debuting as part of a merchandising blitz around the time of Fates’ release, and Fates’ status as the only mainline game to have a) more than one symbol to itself, b) an entire booster series to itself, and c) multiple starter decks to itself, Fates casts a massive shadow over the card game that will come up again and again in this analysis.

The Least Common Symbol(s)

The least common single “symbol”, appropriately enough, is the absence thereof: No Symbol. Despite seeing dedicated use for multiple games (Heroes and Warriors), plus various other occasional uses (Tokyo Mirage Sessions, the Cipher mascots, various Series 17 and 22 cards), it’s a substantial way behind the next least common symbol, Brown (Crest of the Goddess).

However, the least common symbol configuration of any kind is dual Red/Blue, which is limited to appearing on only two Tokyo Mirage Sessions cards in Series 22.

Part 2: The Standings by Game

The Game with the Most Cards

It’s not even a contest: once again, Fates is overwhelmingly the most represented single game, beating the closest competition (Awakening) by a factor of 200+. Both Three Houses (4th) and Genealogy of the Holy War (3rd) put up surprisingly good showings, too; you can probably attribute Genealogy's high position to it constantly stealing Thracia 776's lunch money in Yellow waves, as these two games have by far the most uneven skew of mainline game representation within the same symbol.

Even if you merge games with heavily overlapping casts (see appendix) together, Fates is still handily the winner, although the Tellius games now beat Awakening for second place.

(For details on how cards for characters who appear in multiple games have been counted as belonging to one over the other, see the appendix.)

The Game with the Fewest Cards

Another no-brainer: it’s BS Fire Emblem: Archanea Saga, which never received any active, proclaimed representation in any Cipher series and therefore has zero dedicated cards. Only one character who originated in BSFE, Malice, ever received a card, and even then that one card instead belonged to a New Mystery of the Emblem set. (Things get a bit less awful for the game if your standard is “any cards belonging to anyone present in that game, regardless of what game they were originally billed for”, but that’s another can of worms.)

That said, the game that was explicitly stated as being subject to representation in Cipher that received the fewest dedicated cards was Gaiden. While its remake, Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, received a very healthy number of cards, Gaiden itself only received three: cards for Mycen, Celica, and Silque depicting them in outfits/art styles from the original. The only series which claim to represent Gaiden are Series 17 and 22, as part of their push to feature every game, “featuring” it alongside Shadows of Valentia.

(By contrast, the original two Archanea games and their two remakes each received one billed, dedicated wave: Series 1 for Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light, Series 4 for Mystery of the Emblem, Series 13 for Shadow Dragon, and Series 15 for New Mystery of the Emblem. Granted, while Series 1 and 4 are billed as targeting the original games, the art style and character models are very much rooted in the remakes.)

If the Gaiden/Shadows of Valentia distinction is too hair-splitty for your tastes and you think the Gaiden cards should just count as Shadows of Valentia, the next lowest are:

Overall: Sword of the Champion (17)

Game: Warriors (28)

Mainline game: Mystery of the Emblem (35)

Mainline game with a distinct cast: Thracia 776 (70)

Part 3: The Standings by Characters and Cards

How Many Cards Are There?

2586 distinct cards were produced, across a total of 3177 card printings (as reported by the Cipher official site's card database). See the appendix for details on what was and wasn't counted as a "distinct card" for the purposes of the former figure.

The Most Cards

Marth is the most frequently appearing unit name, boasting a respectable 29 unique cards; the runners-up are Chrom, Lucina, and female Corrin, with 26 each. The rest of the top 20(ish) is as follows:

However, if characters who appear in multiple incarnations/genders under different unit names are taken together, Corrin dethrones Marth and takes the top spot by an absolutely massive margin, at 51 unique cards across three different unit names (male, female, Kingdom of Valla). The rest of the top 20(ish) standings are somewhat impacted by this modification, looking like this:

The top lists, especially the combined one, are noticeably dominated by Fates and Three Houses. Once again, the impact of the immense amount of focus that Fates received in Cipher is made evident; and the rapid rise of Three Houses’ protagonists in the standings is especially remarkable, given how late in Cipher’s life cycle the game came along.

Conversely, Jugdral characters don’t even figure into the top ~20 standings; the character with the most Yellow cards, Sigurd, is tied for 27th (uncombined)/28th (combined) with Caeda, Hinoka, the combined Kanas, Shade, and Yuzu.

The Fewest Cards

A total of 171 unit names only ever appeared on one card; taking into account characters who appear under multiple unit names, 159 characters have only a single card to any of their names. Such one-hit wonders most commonly occur in Purple (48) and Red (41), while Blue had the fewest such characters at just 3 (Naga, Validar, and Excellus).

Of particular interest is the small club of seven characters who never appeared in any of the retail starter decks or booster packs, instead receiving their one and only card in the Promotional Card Packs: Matthis (Red), Bantu (Red), Shannam (Yellow), Merlinus (Purple), Athos (Purple), Gromell (Green), and the gatekeeper (Brown). As you can see, the overall trend with these characters (only Athos and Bantu fall outside of it) leans toward the somewhat... comical.

Additionally, there is one character whose one and only card was a starter deck exclusive: Erk (Purple).

Also of note are the small selection of characters who have only one card, but whose only card is of a high rarity.

Three characters have the... well, super rare distinction of having their one and only Cipher card be a Super Rare: Nyna (Red), Nils (Purple), and Seteth (Brown). If you count distinct unit names, this number expands to five to include Camus (Red) and the gender-neutral-ish “Kingdom of Valla” version of Corrin (White/Black; unlike the others, the latter also has an SR+ alternate print), but both of these characters have other cards under multiple other unit names (respectively Sirius and Ezekiel, and the male and female versions of Corrin).

There is only one distinct unit name whose sole card is a Hero Rare: Seiros (Brown). However, the character as a whole does have other cards under multiple other unit names (Rhea, Immaculate One).

There are six characters whose only card is a Rare, but said card has an R+ alternative printing: Michalis (Red), Mila (Red), Eyvel (Yellow, although she has four more cards under her Brigid identity, including another Rare), Idunn (Purple), the Medallion (Green, although there are two more cards featuring the released Yune), and Naga (Blue).

Characters whose only card is a Rare without having an R+ variant include Phina (Red), Medeus (Red), Silvia (Yellow), Lene (Yellow), Saias (Yellow), Lara (Yellow), Larum (Purple), Ursula (Purple), Sonia (Purple), Tethys (Purple), Valter (Purple), Caineghis (Green), Validar (Blue), Jeralt (Brown), and Kronya (Brown). This “category” is heavily populated by dancers, who frequently received only one card.

The Most Higher-Rarity Cards

Of the 171 unit names who received Super Rare (SR) cards, Ike tops the list as the single unit name with the most, at 6, with runner-ups Chrom, Marth and male Corrin close behind at 5. Once again, though, if one were to tally all the different unit names covering the same character together, Corrin leapfrogs ahead by a massive margin, clocking in at 10 across their three unit names, while Robin now also ties with Chrom and Marth at 5.

Similarly, there were 136 SR+ alternate prints of SR cards spread across 91 unit names, and of these, Marth received the most, at 5, followed by Ike and Azura. While Corrin, among others, does once again leap significantly up the rankings if one combines different unit names for the same character, for once they don’t outright win, but instead tie with Marth.

Part 4: Character Representation

How Many Characters Are In Cipher?

A grand total of 651 characters, spread across 674 distinct unit names (alternate identities, gender variants, etc.) were featured in Cipher.

The Most Complete Games

Five games comprise the “perfect attendance” crew, wherein every single one of their playable characters has at least one card: the mainline games Awakening, Fates, Echoes: Shadows of Valentia and Three Houses, as well as the spinoff Tokyo Mirage Sessions. Naturally, all of these games were released in the 2010s. Granted, Tokyo Mirage Sessions only has a principal playable cast of fourteen, so that one is less of an achievement.

That said, their inroads into their non-playable casts are generally less comprehensive. Awakening and Fates more or less hit all their major ones, with the most “important” missing characters from each respectively being Phila and Anthony, while Shadows of Valentia and Three Houses are far more spotty. Tokyo Mirage Sessions also has only three members of its supporting cast covered.

The Most Incomplete Games

The game with the most missing playable characters is, predictably, the perennially neglected Thracia 776. 20 of its playable characters are missing: Dagdar, Marty, Callion, Glade, Keane, Alba, Robert, Xavier, Conomor, Brighton, Hicks, Dahlson, Amalda (the only missing playable woman from the game), Ilios, Schroff, Troude, Salem, Homeros, Ralph and Galzus.

Thracia 776 also has the most incomplete selection of non-playable characters, as only one villain (Reinhardt, again predictably) and one NPC (August) ever received cards. This also makes Thracia 776 one of only two games to be missing their main antagonist, Raydrik (the other is arguably Shadows of Valentia, depending on how one views it: Jedah is in, but Duma and Rudolf are not).

The next least complete is more of a surprise. The Archanea games (taken together) are missing 17 playable characters. This breaks down into 9 who originated in Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light (Boah, Dolph, Macellan, Tomas, Beck, Lorenz, Roger, Caesar and Radd), two from Mystery of the Emblem (Cecil and Warren), one from Shadow Dragon (Ymir), and all of the BS Fire Emblem originals except Malice. The absence of Cecil also makes Mystery of the Emblem Book 2 and New Mystery of the Emblem the only mainline games who are missing any members of their starting party in Cipher.

For the record, the remaining games’ playable character absence break down as follows:

Genealogy of the Holy War: 5 (Creidne, Rodrubán, Deimne, Mana, Hawke) All of Genealogy's absences are just substitute units, so one could argue that Genealogy is technically complete depending on how one feels about the substitutes.

The Binding Blade: 5 (Treck, Yoder, Garret, Geese, Zeiss)

The Blazing Blade: 4 (Isadora, Harken, Dart, Geitz)

The Sacred Stones: 2 (Moulder, Duessel)

Path of Radiance: 1 (Giffca)

Radiant Dawn: 3 (Renning*, Giffca, Nealuchi) Renning has one card as his Bertram identity from Path of Radiance, but not as himself; whether you want to count him is a matter of opinion.

The Game with the Most Enemies

Cipher always heavily prioritized playable characters and generally chose to keep enemies to an occasional dripfeed. One major exception arose halfway through its lifespan, and appropriately enough, it was Genealogy of the Holy War, a game which already boasts one of the largest casts of major antagonists in the entire series. A record thirteen of its non-playable bosses/villains/enemies received cards: Arvis, Travant, Lombard, Eldigan, Díthorba, Pamela, Manfroy, Julius, Arion, Ishtar, Banba, Fótla, and Ériu. It also has the highest number of such enemies who received Super Rare cards, with four (Arvis, Eldigan, Julius, and Ishtar).

Admittedly, this figure is somewhat padded out by the rather unusual decision to include the Díthorba/Pamela pair and the Banba/Fótla/Ériu trio despite them all being relatively unimportant palette swaps of each other.

It also says a lot that despite all of this, there were still many major Genealogy villains who never made it into Cipher! Among the most noticeable absences are Reptor, Blume, Chagall, Hilda, and Jamke’s two brothers.

The Game with the Most Cutscene-only Non-Playable Characters

Likewise, the Tellius games have an above average number of cards featuring NPCs who are never encountered as units in gameplay, with a total of eight: Elena, Rajaion, Almedha, Altina, Soan, Ashunera, Yune, and - most uniquely - Lehran’s Medallion, which received the only card in all of Cipher whose subject is an inanimate object and (technically) not a character. Notably, a substantial proportion of these characters are historical figures who are long dead by the time of the games’ events, another occurrence that is virtually unique to Cipher’s coverage of Tellius.

Given that the Tellius games also have a very healthy selection of general non-playable units (bosses and NPCs alike) who got cards (Greil/Gawain, Ashnard, Petrine, Bryce, Gromell, Izuka, Dheginsea, Ashera, and the Disciple of Order), they also overall have the highest number of non-playable characters, clocking in at 18 (this figure can expand to 19 if you’re willing to count Zelgius as non-playable). Adding bosses puts them well ahead of Genealogy, which only gains two additional NPCs (Annand and young Aoife - as with Zelgius, your mileage may vary on whether the latter should count) on top of all of the bosses with cards.

Major absences

Four final bosses, hailing from five games, are absent from Cipher: Duma (Gaiden/Shadows of Valentia), Veld (Thracia 776), the fire dragon (The Blazing Blade), and Aelfric/the Umbral Beast (Three Houses’ Cindered Shadows story). Naturally, no justification for their absence has ever emerged, but the fire dragon, at least, is understandable; however, Duma and Aelfric are very strange given the intense amounts of Shadows of Valentia and Three Houses content in Cipher.

Comparisons to other crossovers

By its nature, Cipher has by a massive margin more characters present than any other Fire Emblem crossover work, and this record is not likely to be beaten unless Intelligent Systems decides to produce another card game. Even so, its coverage was not comprehensive, and indeed, sometimes there are characters featured in other crossovers but not in Cipher, and vice versa. There is something to be said for comparing each game’s character selections, and considering their different priorities.

At the time that Cipher ended, there were eight crossover characters who were present in Heroes but who had never been featured in Cipher: Eremiya, Rudolf, Duma, Kempf, Geese (the only one of these characters who was playable in his game of origin), Bramimond, Jorge, and Mustafa. If you count OCs, the total figure expands to 17 with Gustav, Henriette, Gunnthrá, Laegjarn, Helbindi, Hríd, Ylgr, Hel, and Freyja. Naturally, this number has since increased and will only continue to do so as time goes on; notable subsequent crossover inclusions who never saw the light of day in Cipher include Duessel, Caellach, Veld, and Solon.

There are 60 characters who received cards in the original Fire Emblem Trading Card Game from the early 2000s, but not Cipher: 13 from Mystery, 23 from Genealogy, and 24 from Thracia 776. This is due to the former game’s decision to feature the complete playable casts (and in the case of Genealogy, virtually all villains of importance) of the few games which it featured. As a consequence, every playable Jugdrali and Archanean character (except Ymir, who didn’t exist at the time, and the remaining five BSFE originals) has at least one card of some kind, even if it’s not Cipher.

There are four characters who were present in Awakening’s Spotpass material but not Cipher: Dagdar, Salem, Raydrik, and Moulder. As you can see, that figure is weighted quite heavily toward Thracia 776; notably, despite his critical importance as the game’s primary villain, Awakening is the only crossover since the original TCG to include Raydrik at all!

Surprisingly, given its narrow scope, there are six characters who made it into Tokyo Mirage Sessions in some form who are not present in Cipher: Lorenz (Archanea), Dolph, Macellan, Garrick, Pheros, and Cervantes. The Archanean characters in question are all playable units (and armored!) in their original game, while the Awakening ones are all bosses. For most of them, it’s understandable why Cipher skipped them (although it seems reasonable that had Cipher continued, the Awakening ones might have made it in for the sake of new blood, given that Awakening already had all of its major characters in). However, Lorenz is arguably one of the most important characters left to have never been featured in Cipher, given his significance to the first act of Mystery of the Emblem.

Understandably, given its focus on superpopular characters, there are no characters who were featured in Warriors but not Cipher. Of Warriors’ cast of original characters, only Velezark, Yelena and Oskar never received cards in Cipher.

Part 5: Artists and Autographs

The single most prolific artist in Cipher was Mayo (@mayomoyo). A total of 126 cards feature distinct art from her! The character that she drew the most frequently was Randal, with 6 cards, followed by Caeda and Delthea (5 apiece).

In Cipher’s lifetime, there were 115 alternate prints of cards that featured autographs, usually from that character’s voice actor. The voice actors who signed the most cards were Yū Kobayashi and Satomi Satō, who signed four cards each - the former solely for Lucina cards, and the latter for cards for both female Corrin and female Kana. The runner-up is Nobunaga Shimazaki, who autographed three cards for male Corrin and male Kana.

There are three cards that were autographed by individuals who are not voice actors:

B04-018SR+ Marth: Hero-King of Light was autographed by Maki Hakoda, the card’s artist, instead of voice actor Hikaru Midorikawa (who had previously autographed a Marth card in Series 1, and would do so again in Series 17).

B05-048SR+ Narcian: Cunning Wyvern General was autographed by Kōtarō Yamada, the card’s artist. As this card predated Heroes, Narcian did not have a voice actor at the time.

B09-051SR+ Al: Blue Champion was autographed by both Hiroshi Izawa and Kōtarō Yamada, the author and illustrator of the Sword of the Champion manga; Yamada also illustrated this card. This card is the only card to have been autographed by more than one person. Al does not have a voice actor.

Despite everything, despite there being a total of 115 autographed cards, there are four main protagonists who never received autographed cards at all: Sigurd, Seliph, Leif, and male Byleth. There are two likely reasons why the former three never got them:

At the time that their first cards were produced, none of them had voice actors. (Seliph debuted in Heroes with a voice actor, Yūma Uchida, a month before the launch of his first appearance in Cipher, Series 8, but Series 8 would have been in production well before that point.)

Cipher generally favored giving Jugdral characters alternate art that formed joined panoramas for their + card variants, something that (with the sole exception of Series 5) is mutually exclusive with having autographs.

Ultimately, the Yellow symbol and the Jugdral setting have the fewest autographed cards by far, only getting two - Deirdre and Lachesis (both released long after their respective Heroes debuts) - and is also the only setting/symbol to have absolutely none of its protagonists ever get an autographed card (although they each got their fair share of alternate art + cards).

The absence of an autographed male Byleth, however, is rather inexplicable; although he did get an un-autographed SR+ card, he is the only Brown/Three Houses protagonist not to receive an autographed one. Indeed, female Byleth received multiple autographed cards! (Even if one was from a starter deck rather than being a rare or super rare card.)

Appendix

This is the spreadsheet that was used in the writing of this article. It includes details on which games were attributed to which cards, an appendix laying out the criteria by which attribution was made, sorted lists of characters by card count (including the SR-specific lists), and the original versions of the article’s charts.

This spreadsheet that tracks appearances in Fire Emblem spinoffs and crossovers was also used to compare and contrast character representation across each. It has a series of filters that you can use to highlight which characters appear in which combinations of games (e.g. "Who appeared in the 2000s TCG, but not Cipher?")

The total number of cards identified for the "distinct cards" figure was the basis for all of the other statistical analyses (character card counts, symbol card counts). The standard for inclusion in this figure is having a unique card ID, and hence this figure takes the following cards into account:

Promotional cards that are reprints of starter or booster cards with alternate art are counted, as they have unique card IDs.

Alternate reprint variants of cards where the ID is not unique beyond an added or changed rarity suffix are not counted. This affects + and X higher-rarity prints, ST reprints of booster pack cards, and PRr reprints of promotional cards. An exception is made for B11-101+X(S04-003ST) Camilla: Bewitching Malig Knight, given its unique card ID and unusual circumstances of release: unlike other +X cards, it was produced long after the original card and features even more significant changes than usual for +X cards circa Series 9-12.

The five April Fools cards (prefix "USO-") are not counted, since they were never physically released and are not included in the official website's card database. (Previous versions of this analysis inadvertently included them in the statistics; the data has since been updated to remove them.)

#fire emblem

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eirichele · 4 years

Text

a VERY in depth look at fire emblem: three houses and its grooming problem

OR: how this game managed to make an accurate portrayal of grooming and exactly how it made it palatable

(warning: really long. though to be fair, the length is mostly screenshots. you can also read this in google docs)

***

SO i’ve been wanting to write something Formal and In Depth for a while, because this game’s reception has been a nightmare for me and other csa victims and quarantine hit, so i finally had time. i just really wanted to get all my thoughts in one place before i move on from 3h. i’m basically done talking about this after this one because... idk what else i could say that hasn’t been said here, really. fe has history with this, and the in-game excuses ring hollow when we know the fe devs disregard csa victims at every turn while pandering to male gamers who love sexualised teenage girls.

long, long analysis under the cut:

Some previous context: Fire Emblem games have a history of normalising harmful romances

It’s understandable for many to not know the history of the series since 3H was insanely successful and it brought a lot of new fans. Fire Emblem has always been a character driven game where making your units bond was encouraged both for gameplay and story reasons. Some end in special romantic epilogues, and some of those relationships were concerning to say the least: Sylvia, 14 years old, can marry every eligible man in Genealogy of the Holy War, Jill from Radiant Dawn, 18, can marry her father’s protegé who is 34. This is not a new phenomenon for the series, it just became more noticeable and malicious post-Awakening, because it became first person fanservice.

FE decided to rehaul the series sometime in 2011 by including dating sim elements, which made it explode in popularity. Avatars were introduced to represent the player in-game, allowing them to marry whoever they wanted. The first game to include a pseudo-dating sim was Awakening, released in 2012. The player can marry every named playable character, on top of the usual FE shipping mechanics . Donnel, Nowi and Ricken, all children, are part of your party. Nowi is a thousand year old dragon that looks like a child of 11-15. She loves playing, and throws tantrums, and overall acts very childishly, but the narrative insists that she’s really an adult feigning childishness.

In Fire Emblem lore, dragons are veeeery slow ageing people with the power to transform into dragons, which means they can be biologically still children even when they’re hundreds or thousands of years old. Tiki, another similar character, is considered a child in Shadow Dragon by her adult dragon family while explicitly being around Nowi’s age. Despite evidence to the contrary, Awakening treats Nowi like an adult who can marry. Fire Emblem had previously included many dragon child characters in the past, but none were romantic options for anyone, and they were considered a younger sibling of sorts. Nowi was a first in the series, and after her inclusion these romances became common with characters like Nyx in Fates and Flayn and Sothis in Three Houses. Worth noting is her design, which is incredibly sexualised. A (not so) fun fact is that the outfit designer of Awakening and Fates was none other than Three Houses’ future director, Toshiyuki Kusakihara:

Ricken and Donnel are just regular 13-15 year old boys. No magic. Other adult characters and your avatar just marry them, and it’s stated they will have children in the future. The next game, Fates, actually managed to outdo this somehow: Your pedophilic romance options are now five, and unlike Awakening’s avatar Robin, whose age was unknown and could potentially be portrayed in their mid-teens, Corrin canonically is in the 18-21 age range, making this unambiguous pedophilia. Fates is a very standout game when it comes to Fire Emblem’s worst parts: There’s no “children from the future” excuse for the avatar having children like in Awakening. The avatar impregnates all spouses (or gets pregnant) and has the child after an in-game time skip, which means you can canonically impregnate your approximately 15 year old sister in a Fire Emblem game. You really do not want to stan these devs.

pictured: definitely not 18, even if the english localization really tried to pull that.

Which is yet another thing in this game: Incest with adopted siblings is possible and even encouraged. Incest is constantly fetishized through the character of Camilla, who is an attractive and sexualized older sister obsessed with the main character. Another (not so) fun fact is that most characters will continue to call you ‘brother’ or ‘sister’ in the story even if you’re married because Fire Emblem rarely changes the story to fit with your marriage options. The most insidious thing about the incest and pedophilic couples in Fates is that they’re completely normalized. It’s not shown as abusive, and they look like normal couples that could even look cute out of context. They confess their love, tease each other, blush and have cutesy epilogues.

pictured: marrying your sibling and a literal child

All of this is to end with the conclusion that this is a constant pattern with Fire Emblem, especially the ones with marriage. Any potentially awful relationships portrayed are not outwardly abusive. You won’t catch Xander gaslighting Corrin, or anything. They’re a “cute” relationship that just happens to be incest. Their interactions are not outwardly unhealthy, and it’s tailor made for ‘’’harmless’’’ shipping, but in the end, it’s incest and pedophilia portrayed as a valid pairing that’s “healthy” by all means. It’s normalization of something that’s objectively horrifying to live through. As a CSA victim, Fates literally made me quit the franchise for all the years it was popular.

When Three Houses announced that it would take place in a school while you play a teacher, after seeing all of this play out all FE fans could feel was dread. When 3H announced even later that all romance would take place post-time skip everyone forgot about their reservations instantly— ignoring the fact that everyone being over 18 when marriage happens doesn’t absolve all potential problems with predatory writing. How you write a couple with an age gap is critical. Moving on with Actual Three Houses:

Byleth has a canon age unlike Corrin and Robin, but the game tries to hide it

Corrin and Robin were both avatars meant to be somewhat customized. Byleth cannot be customized. They have a set appearance and age. You can choose Byleth’s name, gender and birthday when you start up the game, but Byleth canonically cannot be born anywhere after September 20th 1159, their “canon” birthday, since their father states in his diary that they’re already alive. 3H starts in the year 1180, which makes Byleth 20 or already 21 depending on their chosen birthday.

All other Three Houses characters have their ages shown clearly in their unit menu, and all bios update accordingly when you learn new information, including yours. Byleth’s age is revealed in a cutscene, but despite this, the game tries to “hide” their age. This is all Byleth has in their bio even well into the endgame:

It’s presumably so the player can “headcanon” their age, as the player avatar, but they still have a canon age, because they’re not a customizable one. It’s a very odd design choice that makes no sense until you consider that the game is romantically pushing teenagers at you. Romanceable students range from 14 to 22 years old before the time skip, but the great majority are in the 15-18 range. Early on, when you introduce yourself to your students, they seem taken aback by how young you are and comment how you seem like you’re “their age.” This is your only dialogue option in response:

No sixteen year old has ever told a twenty/-one year old that they’re the same age, but this is anime high school dating sim logic. An addendum is that this game has incredibly shallow dialogue options to hide how linear it really is, and this is the first glaring instance. This comes up later on with the romance options—you have little to no options to reject a student’s advances. Boundaries as both a player and RPG protagonist are non-existent in this game.

pictured: “yes” and “sure why not” dialogue options to agreeing to meet with a student alone. linhardt just turned 17 last month

Byleth can flirt pre-time skip

Most of your units are students, thus all romance should in theory, stay in the war phase…. Which doesn’t happen at all. All the narrative framing of characters’ “closeness” and foreshadowing of romance are definitely a part of the school phase. The worst offender by far is an in-game event called the Goddess Tower, the school’s local romantic spot. It’s said in universe that a man and a woman who make a vow there on a specific night will stay together forever, and this is a prelude to the marriage scenes five years later, which will take place in that Tower. You can even pick who to bring with you to the Tower, and this is what Byleth says to themselves before the drop down menu shows up:

this is one of those lines that’s like semi-innocuous, since byleth is addressing the player here, but what the fuck is a teacher doing thinking about a student “that way”???? my girl doesn’t know there will be a 5 year time skip where they’re going to be legal she’s just saying this about a bunch of sixteen year olds.

The Goddess Tower itself is a mess of bungled flirting and unnatural romantic scenes, made all the worse by the fact that you can only trigger this scene with a student. Older characters like Seteth, Catherine and Shamir are locked out of the Goddess Tower. They can’t be picked from the menu, and if they’re your highest support, the game will default to the next highest supported student. Here’s some lines from Ingrid’s scene:

ingrid is 17 when this takes place. the youngest byleth possible is well over 21 and the oldest is turning 22 next month

Check out this post for more examples of the Goddess Tower. Byleth’s dialogue options here are right out of a god damn PSA about child safety. They genuinely come off as a huge creep here, especially “Just the two of us….” My dude.

Thankfully one of the few instances where you can turn the student down, but notable anyway. Dorothea’s C support, where you have the option of following her flirty lead, and her response will be the same regardless of your choice:

Another infamous bit of inappropriate flirting is Edelgard’s Japanese C1 support, which you’re likely to unlock before her 18th birthday in June because it’s her very first support:

This was thankfully removed in the English version (Though she still has the same flustered reaction), but the intentions are there. Curiously, I’ve seen many supporters of the Byleth/Edelgard ship say they were upset this was removed, while simultaneously denying the ship has any grooming connotations whatsoever— when an authority figure making ha ha, unless? 😳 sexual jokes in front of underage/barely legal kids to see their reaction is textbook grooming:

Once a trusting or special relationship is created, the offender may carefully test the victim’s reaction to sex. (x)

Not helping is the fact that Edelgard falling in love with Byleth during the school phase is practically canon judging by dialogue in CF of her missing you “more” than the others. Which leads to:

Some interactions pre-time skip resemble grooming tactics

In fans’ minds the lack of boundaries are somewhat mitigated by Byleth’s supposed good intentions, and it’s common to hear fans say Byleth obviously didn’t go to Garreg Mach intending to marry one of the kids they’re teaching because grooming must be malicious from the start. However, it’s well known that unlike premeditated abuse of younger kids, sexual abuse of older teens often happens by “accident”

In contrast, educators who teach at the late middle and high school level target victims in this age range. They might be outstanding teachers, although they may also be mediocre (Shakeshaft, 2003). Sexual abuse at this level may be less premeditated and planned and more often a result of bad judgment (Shakeshaft, 2004). (x)

In other words, by putting zero boundaries between teacher and students and enabling weird situations, which is 3H to a T. Many students flirt, but Byleth doesn’t say anything, or even flirts back.

Secondly, Byleth is like… barely a character, so this isn’t meant to be a callout post accusing them of being a manipulative abuser or whatever, because this is about the dev team putting teenagers in these flirty positions to satisfy the player that Byleth is meant to represent. Byleth is just the plot device they use to do so. People often say this flirting isn’t grooming because Byleth has “good intentions,” but they’re a self-insert, and a self-insert doesn’t have to have any in-universe intentions because the outside writing drives their actions— the thing is we KNOW these writers are not above writing pedophilia as harmless romance. People project good intentions on Byleth, because that’s the avatar. You’re supposed to project on them. This of course includes their “good intentions,” and when I play 3H I headcanon that too, but canonically speaking, these intentions are 100% ambiguous. They never voice attraction to another student, or disgust at the thought of dating them because they speak in small, limited dialogue options and thought bubbles. We don’t have a real, canon indication that they would oppose dating a student before the time skip nor that they would actually do it.

What we do have are the canonical interactions that make people uncomfortable, however. Byleth can think of students in “that way” when the Gatekeeper describes a romantic getaway on the Goddess Tower. If we take them at face value, then their dialogue options clearly establish that they’re okay with flirting with students as young as fifteen, at the very least. They “die” before potentially starting to date any of them for real, but the beginnings of an uncomfortable romance are there and the game fully embraces this as okay .

This is all a result of the writing. Fates never condemned you for picking your sister over any of the other thirty (?) romanceable characters, just like Three Houses doesn’t condemn you for picking Lysithea over any older women in the teaching staff. It’s just another S support option, and it even gets some sweet extra content. She’s touched that you care for her, and you do everything in your power to take care of her frail health, and you guys get happily married. No one ever mentions that you were her high school teacher when she was fifteen and you met at said high school, and she was your favourite student— and this is, you know, something of an important detail in any relationship. Just like Fates, it’s sweet and shippable out of context, which just encourages normalization. How dare you say this is unhealthy? It’s tender! Look how much he loves her!

The thing is that 3H initially presents your students as your charges in school. You’re unambiguously in charge of them as both tactician and instructor, even if you treat each other in a familiar way. Even if most students technically outrank you as nobles, Garreg Mach as politically neutral ground implicitly puts you above them as their teacher. The younger ones are vulnerable teenagers, away from home in a boarding school. Most have some sort of underlying emotional problem that they come to you for. They come to you for advice, and sometimes just venting. You can give them gifts, and have tea every week with them if you so wish in an off-screen conversation. Tea also serves as the “skinship” of this game where you get to see the anime boy/girl of your dreams from up-close, which is a pretty creepy thing to do with a fifteen year old anime girl even out of universe, but I digress.

Looking at this chart in the essay I linked earlier gave me a little bit of a stroke, because the “Strategies” aspects are all things you do in 3H prior to the time-skip:

This is obviously accidental, but still concerning because we know these devs have a twisted idea of what romance is, and that culminated in what I sincerely hope is an unintended but still eerily accurate portrayal of grooming.

Emotional confidence, teatime and gifts, flirting, making a vow together at the Goddess Tower, sex jokes, are all things you do pre-timeskip, and some student’s personal arcs make this even worse. Marianne, Dimitri and Bernadetta have mental illnesses, and they heavily rely on you for support. Edelgard and Sylvain express attraction towards you. You meet Felix’s father and he puts his full trust in you. Ignatz, Bernadetta and Marianne have very low self-esteem. Characters like Ashe and Annette have major parental issues that they discuss with you. In short, you see them at their most vulnerable as kids, and then get together as adults.

About the only thing you don’t do pre-time skip in that list is “Isolate,” but some character arcs post time skip have this distinct vibe nonetheless. Many students leave their homes in the war phase explicitly because of you and no other reason. CF Ingrid in particular outright betrays Faerghus and everything she knew for you, as she says she doesn’t really believe in Edelgard’s war. Knowing you as a teacher can string her along in her Goddess Tower scene while she’s underage puts this in an awkward perspective.

This is what makes the five year time skip hold little weight. Everyone is an adult when the relationship is consummated, yes, but it starts pre-time skip.

Emotionally vulnerable teenagers having a strong relationship and frequent alone time with their older teacher, who is a confidant and someone that makes them feel special is already looking bad, but the absolute loyalty, idolisation and close relationship when they’re adults only makes it worse, even if it’s probably just a result of poorly thought out game design and player pandering gone wrong.

It’s not just player pandering, however. The devs just clearly think these relationships are okay. Other non-Byleth student/teacher romances deserve a mention, too—Manuela is forty something and thinks of her romantic potential with some 19 year-old:

Thankfully, this support ends at B, but others don’t. She has romantic endings with Lorenz, Ferdinand and Dorothea, who she even canonically met before Garreg Mach as a child and who idolises her as an opera star. The game doesn’t stop at the normalisation of grooming with Byleth, they’re just the most noticeable example, especially since it’s a power fantasy for the player who can romance all of them, not just a few.

The time skip had the opportunity to fix some of the creepy implications, but it didn’t

People like to look at the time-skip as a justification of romance. That 15 year old kid is 20 now, after all, and your students are adults, who have matured and grown outside of your influence.... Except your interactions with them remain virtually the same. They still call you Professor and hold you in some extremely high esteem as an authority figure.

Three Houses has an avatar worship problem like all newer Fire Emblem games and this definitely contributes to the uncomfortable implications in the narrative, because literally everyone respects you and adores you to an uncomfortable degree. Even as grown ass adults, the avatar worship just makes it seem like your students still idolize you like when they were kids awe struck by how cool you are.

They don’t show the change from “mentor” to “peer” satisfactorily, like they intended for the romance elements to work. Byleth’s name is customizable, making a first name basis difficult, but they easily could have changed your war phase title to something that would make it seem like your students’ view of you changed, like a military title such as Commander, or even just Eisner, your canonical last name. All students still call you “Professor,” in the war phase, though. Some students even call you Professor when you’re about to propose to them in the S support, like Lysithea. Leonie, one of the oldest students who is actually your age, has this to say about calling you by your name… you know, like a normal peer and friend would:

White Clouds is also a whole year while VW, AM, and SS take place during six to seven months, CF during five. You spend more time as their teacher and mentor than as “peers,” so Leonie’s position is pretty understandable despite being like, barely a year younger than you.

To rewind, this game lets you pick a “special” student pre-time skip, who you’re encouraged to build bonds with through tea, gifts and the Goddess Tower. You’re their favourite teacher, as said by many other characters. They grow up and join you in your war regardless of who they have to fight, some even just to be with you. They still affectionately call you Professor, and look up to you. You can then marry them. This is unironically seen as both acceptable and even romantic.

Many of these interactions like tea are gameplay elements and thus come off as the devs not thinking too hard about it. Except, again, we know they have no problem in writing outright pedophilia, but Fates in particular had heavy backlash over this, which explains the need to tone it down a little. Grooming was their “compromise” between not turning off the casual audience while still cheekily pandering to that crowd. Everyone is technically over eighteen in Three Houses, even if they act extremely similar to their teenage selves. The “technically 1000 year old” romances like Flayn and Sothis were also left intact.

This is an important distinction, because a bit of a popular “it’s not grooming” argument when dealing with the war phase is Byleth’s weird dragon powers slowing their aging. Unlike the kids, all adult non-students in Three Houses undergo no portrait changes during the time skip, including Byleth. The thing is that in Chapter 10, they receive dragon powers as part of some plot nonsense, so it has different implications than just anime hating everyone over 25. There’s implications in the game that this definitely affected their ability to age normally, such as the Flayn ending:

However, we don’t know how their aging was affected and to what extent. Three Houses’ lore didn’t specify much about the way dragons age. Rhea undergoes dragon madness, so we can thus tentatively assume Fódlan’s dragons are similar to Archanea and Valentia’s dragons, which would mean there’s a chance Byleth even aged normally for a few years before slowing down significantly like Nah from Awakening did. It’s entirely possible they’re biologically 25-26 like they’re meant to be, because they didn’t physically die. They were just asleep.

Even if they really did not age a day over 21/22, it still makes the pre-time skip hold weight, however. Byleth can flirt with them as teens prior to any fantastical excuse, and they’re still a mentor figure in the students’ eyes, which goes on to colour every interaction with you in the war phase. Post-time skip everyone is legal, but they still have that history with you, and the game makes no real effort to change that whatsoever. It still fulfills the student/teacher fantasy despite the many, many technicalities it tries to pull out of its ass.

Intsys is self aware and knows that this upsets people

To say these devs probably didn’t mean it that way is not entirely impossible, but they don’t exactly inspire confidence. They even “acknowledge” their flippant way of treating teacher/student relationships in a DLC quest during school phase:

Of course, this is a silly complaint because a teacher being friendly with students is a good thing! Students learn better in a positive environment! The problem here is that it’s obviously referencing and mocking the people upset that this becomes romantic later on. I think anyone would have been able to forgive the overly friendly nature of Byleth and the students’ relationships if no line had been crossed regarding romance. This is Fire Emblem after all, and it wouldn’t be Fire Emblem without supports and relationships values.

But also, Intsys is very good at jokingly acknowledging when they’re being creepy rather than striving to do better. It’s not the first time they’ve done this. A really bold faced example is when the Fire Emblem mobile game widely known for fanservice released a ten year old child (no magic or dragons, either, just a child) dressed as a bride and had her say: “This outfit is just for the [bride] festival, don’t get any weird ideas!” when they were the ones who made a child bride for fanservice purposes.

this one was pretty fucked up even by their standards. comment sums it up

The devs also once called Camilla from Fates a “cow” in an interview for having huge breasts and a little tiara that looks like horns. They designed her that way, but then mocked her for looking like an oversexualized caricature. Any way you look at it, they’re well aware they’re being off-putting and cheekily being like, tee hee, I sure made a dating sim set in a high school! Which ultimately leads to the final point:

Though canon definitely has its problems, it’s less about canon and more about the devs’ bad intentions and the fans’ general lack of empathy for CSA victims:

This is not to diminish canon’s impact at all, because it’s outright malicious to portray an unhealthy relationship as cute and harmless. In short, they just pull technicality after technicality out of their ass to make student/teacher okay somehow instead of just..... not having student/teacher at all. After Fates having fucking incest, 3H and teacher grooming seems outright tame and that definitely contributed to the wide acceptance in the fanbase, because it’s less outrageously pandery. I can’t believe I have to say this in 2020, but…... that’s still not good, lads.

I will also admit there’s some nuance here regarding some of the students, especially those 20+ year olds who aren’t easy to manipulate teenagers like Mercedes. We can sit here and argue all day about whether or not this game legitimately 100% can be considered grooming because of those 20+ students, and all of those in-universe technicalities since there’s no real life academic journal on grooming who will talk about the offender being a dragon, but the end of the matter is that the devs chose to portray their pseudo-dating sim franchise in a school, while your MC is a teacher and most of the students are teens. These relationships are also 100% normalised and okay in-game. They did it with incest and with teacher/student, both topics that are majorly upsetting to CSA victims, and that alone is worth calling out. They even mocked people who were upset about it with a little DLC quest, just to rub it in.

This whole post was a critique of 3H and Intsys, but it’s impossible to critique the game without critiquing the fan culture around it, because the devs definitely had a fanbase in mind. We know they take feedback, since they toned it down after complaints about Fates, but the reason why they didn’t just get rid of pandering aspects, is because they’re popular. There’s a huge demand for this, and that’s exactly why they keep doing it, and it’s the simple reason that online anime spaces full of adults have always placed a particular interest in teens and sexualising and shipping them. A Fire Emblem game set in a school with a calendar and a lot of romantic and social elements that started development in 2017 just screams Persona 5 inspired. Fans obviously noticed.

”edelgard is soooo thirsty” jokes are a lot less funny if you know going for the thirsty kid is a legit strategy

Now, I don’t know shit about Atlus, and after seeing all these memes regarding Persona 5 and the fans’ positive reaction to them, I have zero intentions to play it, but I’ve unfortunately played every single FE game and watched the transition to classic FE to 3DS FE to 3H. I have my criticisms about modern FE’s writing quality for sure, and while I obviously can’t say it used to be perfect because it was still a fairly mediocre (but fun) game about teenagers beating up dragons, it’s now become one of the single most unfriendly fanbases if you’ve gone through any kind of sexual trauma. Incest shipping, pedophilic shipping, and sexualizing teenagers was always there to some extent, but it’s blown up now that the devs have emboldened those fans by doing it in canon itself. It’s rampant, especially on “waifu” circles, and now grooming ships are mainstream and everywhere. Even LGBT friendly “safe spaces” are unbrowsable. F!Edeleth in particular is commonly seen as the holy grail of wlw representation. Linhardt is the most popular M/M option despite the other two being adults. Doromanuela was given a shout-out by Dorothea’s English voice actress.

Old FE games had background things like that all the time, (Roy/Cecilia is Literally gender swapped Petra/Byleth) but the keyword here is background. Not like... 80% of the ships involving the MC in game, which means you weren’t bombarded with this every day. Worse, the discussion about this topic has been non-existent. Reddit has not touched this at all despite the community there being well known for meticulous criticism, Twitter and Tumblr have seen its fair share of discourse, but it’s quickly dismissed. Just click here to watch people dismiss the concerns of every single grooming and CSA victim, or even call them stupid like we can’t recognize this shit in every single fandom. Of note are the fans who dismiss grooming concerns by saying all flirting occurs post time skip (which is false, as we just said) and the characters are only 3-6 years apart anyway……………….. and then gleefully consume/produce pre-time skip content:

miscellaneous tags on a pre-time skip linleth comic (20/21/22 and 16/17 if you’re not keeping count) not posting the comic itself cause i don’t want anon hate lol

While there’s an argument to be made for romance with anyone who was 20+ pre-time skip, there is NONE for the underage kids. None. And like, even if you somehow still want to argue that 3H itself isn’t grooming because of the time skip, a huge chunk of the fanworks objectively are, and this is a huge problem that needs to be called out and nobody does so whatsoever. That comic has 2500+ notes.

This isn’t even a call to tell people to throw out their copies and riot, just to be aware of this and try to make fan spaces a little more bearable for CSA victims. A lot of people call this ‘toxic cancel culture’ and whatnot, but I personally can’t defend a dev team who I KNOW has done heinous things in the past, and continue to support the pedophilic mentality in online anime fan spaces but like, in a cheeky subtle way. They easily could have made Byleth a student who tutors the others because of their experienced mercenary background with Jeralt, or just not let them romance the kids at all. They could have pleased both the dating sim and high school camps by letting you choose to be either a 21+ teacher or a 17 year old student with the appropriate romance options, too. They didn’t do any of this, and their questionable past begs me to ask why, and none of the answers I can come up with are very encouraging. They also even blatantly gave you extra content when romancing students.

I hope contextualizing the 3H grooming at least makes some people understand why it’s so upsetting to see it everywhere. It’s just the decent thing to do to tag your posts, and to not dismiss any of these things. It’s just the decent thing to do to listen to people who are sharing their experiences and respecting their boundaries if they simply do not want to interact with you if you decide to continue supporting Intsys.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this. Stan Claude von Riegan.

#t #fire emblem #fire emblem three houses #fe3h #grooming mention #csa ment

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