#while said mom knows it but doesn't pop up to say hello is just gfdi idk | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

randomnameless · 1 year

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I know you love to call sothis the worst mom but I can't help but feel the only reason her (byleth too to a degree) gets shoved into never being able to take stance on anything is due to edelgard.

The multiple route systems and the devs trying (and failing) to make every side "have a point/reason". We can't let byleth (who sothis is stuck to) make choice by default to go against edelgard. Few characters are allowed to get pissed and stay that way with edelgard in both games. They shackle both byleth and sothis to "any route can be canon" so they don't get to react or remark to anything. No matter the route in hopes its the same for them. I wish they just committed to having byleth/sothis be the main villain protecting their family in hopes but they needed them both for marketing.

I don't see either character truly bad due to being underutilized and stagnant. The multiple-route system has to have them agree with all the routes regardless of whether it makes sense or not.

Of course anon!

That's the Doylist answer to Sothis being, well, nothing more than a plot device who has to follow the player's choice to side with X or Y, even when Y sides with Agarthans and swears to obliterate her kin.

Tru Piss is basically "fuck Sothis" route, but with a greater emphasis on Rhea because red herring and because "Rhea BaD", even if Supreme Leader is barking at the wrong tree!

And yeah, ultimately, all those characters are written in a doylist POV to fit with what the devs intended.

However, even if the Fodlan continuity is rife with, uh, writers and devs wanting to convey one thing but doing it in the most roundabout way possible so no one actually buys it - time and time again they could have written Sothis as a character who gives a fuck about her family, but doesn't.

Voice Line Anon (tm lol) is kind enough to provide me with a translation of her lines in Nopes, but basically yeah, the writers had her actually interact with her fam in an AU of an AU with NG+ on top.

And it would just be, annoying but okay-ish if a certain character's entire arc - as we're supposed to believe per the writers - is about meeting her again!

Mind you, even in SS (or VW), we don't see Sothis, fully aware, react to Rhea giving the most important infodump of all infodumps - answering one of Sothis's biggest questions after she woke up - and in the worst S-Support of the game, we're told they, uh, spoke while Rhea was flying in her half-berserk state and told her some words that made Rhea wonder if she should be happy not to have died.

We're not even in "any route can be canon", because Felix can be recruited to other routes than his own, but at least in AM Felix has plot relevance, has words for Dimitri and reacts to his dad's death. SS could have been the route where Rhea's despair, crying or begging for Sothis just to hold her once again, would amount to something... but no.

To give a parallel, the devs deliberately wrote Dedue as unrecruitable, but who participates in SS/VW to take down Supreme Leader. The same devs wrote Hilda as unrecruitable in Tru Piss - even if in Nopes she dgaf about Supreme Leader anymore and can join her team.

But the devs never bothered to make an event, less a line where Sothis talks to her children - especially to her heartbroken daughter - save for Nopes' AU of an AU. Heck, even in FEH they dance around it, and she looks even more callous because F!Rhea in her FB pleads for Sothis's presence and just wants to see her (even her lvl40 quote!) but Halloween!Sothis refuses to see Halloween!Rhea - when she knows she's the progenitor god!! - for some reason, and I'm pretty sure it's not one that is only tied to Supreme Leader.

Ultimately, yeah, I agree, Sothis is underutilised and stagnant, but both her apparition off-screen in SS and her S-Support in Tru Piss (any routes but Tru Piss takes the cake) really makes me wonder, did the devs really intended her to be a mc guffin but unconsciously wrote her to be the worst parent of the franchise - heck even Sonia looks better - ?

Nopes's NG+ lines really made me reconsider because gfdi she has lines she could have acted/reacted in the game damn it, they even got a characterisation for her regarding each of her relatives... but no.

At times I really wonder if the main crux of the game isn't the corollary to Hresvelg Tea - everyone should love Supreme Leader, of course, but "Rhea BaD" because if she's not "BaD" then what is the player even supposed to be/do? And as sad as it is, Sothis - in general - was used to fuel the "Rhea BaD" pyre more than, imo, the "Hresvelg Grey" uwufest, even if indeed, the two are closely linked.

#anon #replies #sorry I prepared something then TUmblr ate my reply #damn it #Worst mom #is her parenting looking like shit only because of the devs not realising what they wrote?#maybe maybe not #someone put it in better words than me #if FE4 gets a remake we will inevitably get the Lachesis discourse #but mothers being crap in fandoms is rare enough to be noted #and writing Rhea's main trait being desperate to reunite with her mom #while said mom knows it but doesn't pop up to say hello is just gfdi idk #shitty? I mean look at all those fanfics around #they could have turned tru piss as Sothis turning against her kid but being vocal about it #not 'btw idk what my daughter did but no worries about the crest stone let's get married uwu'#Is Sothis ending up like a shit mom only a result of the devs forgetting to code events in CF or not caring about her?#Or was it actually on purpose?#4 years later and I still can't make my mind

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