Yamcha and Rhea enjoyer>>

Ironically though, KT actually has made a Pokemon game recently, the best one in a long time in fact: Pokopia. Extremely good game. Which, ironically, is pretty progressive for a KT game? It has a pro-environmental message, all Pokemon use they/them (WOKE ALERT?? /lh), and despite the bleak setting it’s all about finding hope and restoring the world. Very wholesome. I don’t particularly know if KT was actually behind the story or not, though.

Just can't shake off how badly they handled the Fodlanverse in two games, in terms of writing, as well with how they wrote the two most prominent female characters (and the world's underexplored survivor dragon race in current Fire Emblem history).

All three Johto starters are based on creatures that lay eggs... and Johto is the region that did introduce Pokemon eggs and breeding mechanics.

I'd never thought about the parallels between Camillla and Mercedes, but you're right. Funny that fandom at large seems to have no issue with playing up Mercedes's curviness and maternal qualities. It's not creepy if it's not directed at the Avatar? (Funny too that I don't think I've ever seen anyone actively shipping Mercieleth, M/F or F/F.)

Jeritza seems to attract a few specific types of fans:

Edelstans who want to scrub him of his villainous qualities because they make Edelgard look bad by association. Hubert is subjected to similar treatment.

Antis who believe that Bylitza is the only non-problematic Byleth ship because it can be gay, Jeritza is not one of Byleth's students, and it can't be described as incest (Rhea) or selfcest (Sothis). They can excuse an hybristophilic attraction to a mentally unwell serial killer, but they draw the line at that other stuff!

More tongue-in-cheek fans who support the Lamine incest based on those implications you mentioned, and because it's the only instance of an actually incestuous pairing among the playable cast of this game.

I have considerable difficulty imagining that anyone sincerely likes Jeritza outside of an ulterior motive like one of those. His characterization is extremely sloppy, his value as a unit is limited by his awful availability, his (English) voice acting is easily the worst of the playable cast, and he's neither a realistic nor a flattering depiction of any sort of mental illness. All my usual gripes about Byleth's same-sex S ranks apply to him too, and in addition it's not entirely clear from their supports that Jeritza is even capable of distinguishing between sex and murder. Again, not remotely flattering...and it's still too tame to pass as legitimate blood play or a rape fantasy or another violent kink.

Yeah, an army. Sneaky stuff in the shadows isn’t really how Rhea operates outside of the Sothis Project. The sneakiest thing the CoS did in the main game the execution of Christophe under false charges, and even that was something where 1) there was a direct threat against the Church and Rhea involved, and 2) it was an execution, not an assassination.

Hubert did not laugh that evilly to have his actions ignored.

I don't know if they originated it, but the Khalidstans certainly popularized the take that the Nabatean genocide isn't a "real" genocide because the victims are light-skinned. They take it a step further as well, claiming that IS is racist for (among many other things) centering the suffering of a "white" fantasy race over that of the various darker-skinned characters.

Yes, it's similar to how in another reblog chain (or even that one?) the response to CF being shorter than the other routes was to claim that most of the non-CF chapters are filler...when almost none of them really are, as I pointed out. All of them advance the plot or central conflict in some way, bar SS's endgame which is frequently decried for being weird and random. It's possible to criticize the developers for short-changing Edelgard (and Claude and Rhea) in various ways while not tearing down the one lead who came the closest to having two complete, coherent arcs across both games.

I suppose Jon killing Daenerys was meant to be the male vs. female Targaryen story all along, although it's handled so poorly that absolutely no one liked it. At least I thought it was funny for the show to reveal to the audience that Daeneyrs and Jon are aunt and nephew while the two of them are having sex...but that's about the only positive for me on that point.

I'll be honest; I barely remember Chrom's father, or anything he did. FE13's story is already impossible to take seriously in between all the fanservice and time travel silliness and how it's all a clumsily stitched-together riff on the first three games on the series in sequence. Asking me to care about the actions of a character who never so much as appears onscreen (or even has a name?) in a game like that is entirely too much.

Of course, that does play into the broader point about FE's character writing. Like I said in response to the Bernadetta ask earlier today, gimmick character writing is inevitable in games like these, which sit awkwardly between party-based RPGs and large-scale tactical games where most/all of your units are generics. Every FE has a handful of one-note playable characters, and NPCs - or characters only ever represented as generics - are naturally going to be deemed less important by players because that's how the developers are treating them. Conservation of detail: if the author doesn't put time and effort into fleshing out a character/nation/whatever, then it logically follows that that element is not intended to be very important. The hierarchy in FE is mostly clear-cut:

Avatars > other playable characters with plot armor and/or plot relevance > non-plot-relevant PCs > named, unique NPCs who appear onscreen > NPCs who lack one or more of those traits

There's a bit of wiggle room in the middle, if you were, for example, to compare an undeveloped filler unit to the main villain. Apart from though it's a good rule to follow when handling what one might expect from a particular character. Rhea is actually a good example of how this works. Both Fódlan games treat her as more of a multipurpose tool to be brought out whenever necessary than as the impactful major character that she allegedly is. This is in large part because she's an NPC, and doesn't need to be developed in the same way (full support list and multiple endings, battle lines/interactions, activity dialogue) as even goofy bit players like Raphael or Alois. There's a whole bunch of telling and not showing when it comes to Rhea, just like with Chrom's father I suppose.

THEM.

As if humans had no agency at all and just blindly followed her every words

As if humanity hasn't shown that it is willing to do a lot for power, again and again, and turning against itself if needs be for it, and against others too

As if everything falls on her shoulders

So we have

91 : Nemesis dies - Adrestia rules over Fodlan, Wilhelm gives his throne to his son, but still assists him in battle - we know some Elites escaped, maybe Seiros was hunting them even if she had already recovered Sothis, by this point.

98 : Wilhelm's son, Lycaon, dies, Wilhelm ditches Adrestia - the War of Heroes ends (even if Rhea didn't kill all Elites, given how Maurice is still around!).

100 : An Aegir, Derrick, challenges the Empress of that time (most likely Lycaon's successor) to gain control of Adrestia, but loses the duel.

185 : Garreg Mach's monastery is completed - iirc a NPC in Nopes mentions how it took around 100 years to be built ?

---

Adrestia's own history shows how, without Rhea's input or anything else, the nobility - the Emperor, being the most important noble of them all encompassed - that was supposed to be something measured by knowledge and want to help/guide/protect the people was swapped by "winning a duel".

In 2 years, we came from an Adrestia that opposed and fought Nemesis, to an Adrestia that borrowed his "the strong must rule that's the natural order" motto - if betting the Imperial Throne, aka Adrestia's leadership on a duel, is any indication.

Now, we don't know what happened between 98 and 100, if Rhea told humans to kill each other for funsies or to pick the strongest human to rule over other humans, but we know her "favored" human was still around and bailed out from that nonsense (not even taking back the throne when his son died!) and they returned Seteth's the Ochain Shield to Indech's hamlet at one point, so it might very well mean that neither Rhea nor Wilhelm were around when Derrick von Aegir challenged Lycaon's successor for the throne, nor when that successor agreed to that duel.

Tl;Dr : Nopes gives us enough clues to understand that in this timeline at least, Adrestia became the hellhole we know without any Nabatean/Agarthan influence, but just through humans being, well, humans.

The reason Naga stopped getting involved with humans was because they got power from dragon blood but used that power to wage war on each other again and again. While I'd argue her lack of interference was forced and imposed upon all dragons (i.e. she tried to control them all and basically didn't allow, by law iirc, that dragons were no longer allowed to interact with humans, which plenty dragons said fuck you to), Rhea... didn't do this. She didn't force others of her tribe to stop interacting with humans and continued to herself, but Naga's way of doing things wasn't a choice. When Seteth chose to stop interacting with humans for as long as he did, it was a choice that Rhea left him alone to make.

Then when it comes to humans waging war on each other again and again, Rhea didn't just abandon the good humans who weren't doing anything wrong. She didn't see a few bad apples and go "wow all of humanity sucks, I'm going to leave them for dead, one and all". Some people who have followed me long enough know I have a Big Fat Grudge against Naga and hate her pre-Marth time (i.e. Jugdral's time), and it's because she ultimately decided all humans weren't worth saving because some sucked.

Rhea on the other hand fears extinction of her kind, rightfully so, and yet still can't find it in her to abandon humans. She helps with taking down bad humans (I'm sorry buddy (not really though lol) but if you think someone looting a church isn't bad, you are bad). She only gets involved, however, when the issue is either directed at the Church she lives in (i.e. her people are put in any kind of danger), or her help is directly requested (ex. the Kingdom needing help, or even Edelgard in SB asking for her assistance to deal with Thales).

The game writes Rhea out to be this horrendous person who is a "world" controlling tyrant (because ah yes, she's forcing Morfis to do her bidding. Were you not aware?! Poor Brigid has her will imposed upon them at all times! Sreng is forced to comply with the Church!!! Sure can't believe Rhea has such an influence on the whole world, huh Edelgard?). They let the narrative write her off as having a hand in all the politics, even though like... the Alliance doesn't even really know her. Or care to. She doesn't interfere with them and they don't interfere with her. She went to visit Goneril once that we know of, probably saw that they were taking in child slaves, was disgusted, took the one she saw, and noped right out of there and never wanted to come back.

Then with Faerghus' politics, even though she's got the best relationship with Faerghus, she's not even involved in those politics. If she was, guess what? Dimitri would've been crowned king at her request. He could have gone to her and they could've both said well fuck the idea that you have to be of legal age to take the throne. Yes, I believe she cares for Faerghus' people enough that she's willing to help if asked, but Faerghus deals with its own politics. Rhea doesn't assist unless asked. Have they asked her for help with Sreng? Nope. Did Lambert ask for her help in his plans with Duscur and Sreng? Nope.

And of course, if you say the people of Faerghus were suffering because of Rufus' lack of proper reign and Rhea didn't help, she's demonized for that... but if she did help, she'd be accused of trying to control Faerghus, so either way, she can't win... and the narrative does do this to her and the fandom already hated her for being of a church, so it just took over the majority's perception of her. She's damned if she does or doesn't and her very existence is basically a crime to the fandom and the narrative both.

Adrestia has a slew of political issues, and Rhea had no hand in it. Yeah, the whole Crests thing is a problem in Adrestia (and only Adrestia, don't even get me started on that topic), but Rhea doesn't control what the power structure is like there (or anywhere). If they fight over that shit, it's not because she did anything to make them. She leaves them to deal with their own political strife unless asked for help (again, SB), just like she does with the other Fodlan lands.

We know Crests aren't even her fault so I'm not gonna even bother getting into that.

The sad part is that the narrative paints Rhea as being at fault for the Agarthans slaughtering her brethren and using their blood and bones for power. It then uses her trauma to label her a monster. All Rhea has ever done with humanity is help them if they asked her for help, and what did her help entail? The help of, wouldn't you know it, other humans. People like Catherine and Gilbert were her go-to people for support when asked for it. She would send her personal knights, humans, to help other humans.

Humanity (including Thales and co) are shown to do horrific things, but Rhea is blamed for everything? All the woes of Fodlan? Rhea is at fault for Metodey being a scumbag? For Erwin getting Claude's uncle killed? For Gregoire using his daughter to be a trophy wife while evidently being such a terrible person to her that she's terrified of him? For Rufus refusing to even actually rule and letting Faerghus nearly fall to ruin, leaving the capital in a terrible state? And if you count Hopes' background information, he tried to have Dimitri assassinated multiple times, and it wasn't so subtle that it went unnoticed. But well, I guess that's Rhea's fault too.

Anyway, point being, humans do human things and Rhea magically gets blamed for it. Yet, the game they took inspiration from had humans doing the exact same bullshit, fighting each other and trying to decide who should have this that and the other in regard to power, and it was... a dragon who helped the good humans get through it and survive. Who had to help them because the other humans got so out of control and barbaric on their own, with dragons not involved in their lives at all.

He helps them, doesn't tell them his identity, is only found out by the main character, and takes his leave at the end of the game. He helped them and left them to it and is portrayed in the game in a positive light overall for having helped the good people survive against the humans who were warring against them.

They instead believe "everyone Secretly Already Agrees with Us, but some psychological dysfunction is preventing them from seeing things properly."

So, Edelgard believes that "everyone Secretly Knows my way of running Fodlan is better, but they're just too brainwashed by the Church to see things properly."

And her fans, like Raxis, believe that "everyone Secretly Knows that Edelgard is really a good person, they're just too misogynistic and/or brainwashed by patriarchy to see things properly. Nobody could ever really criticize a woman's behavior, or side with a man like Dimitri instead, without being a secret misogynist (and therefore psychologically defective, so we don't have to actually engage with their arguments)."

So, the reason Edelgard appeals to so many people is that both she and her fans have no "theory of mind", no capacity to "imagine thought processes, emotional states, life experiences, or even entire moral value systems that are Significantly Different From Themselves."

You know I don’t think that’s completely inaccurate, anon, considering they’re 100% convinced that Nilsh is some kind of evil cult leader who brainwashed me and others here into hating Edelgard. Even though. You know. Most of our blogs existed first and Nilsh was just repeating a lot of things we’d been saying for months beforehand.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say they have no concept that we have our own thoughts and feelings. I think they know and it’s a combination of upset (“but I’m right!!! How can they not see how right I am!!!”) and cognitive dissonance (“But wait if a queer woman doesn’t like Edelgard then was I wrong??? No, certainly she must be lying or brainwashed or confused!”)

Gee golly gosh, I wonder why in your experience, people take everything you say or do in bad faith when you have a recorded habit of: 1) Block evasion by any means necessary 2) Followed by lying about how you Totally Blocked Somebody and wanted nothing to do with them 3) When you are still taking screenshots and name-dropping them to your followers 4) Who conveniently seem to stop by said users to harangue them anonymously 5) And only after said harassment gets traced back to you do you declare "I don't condone harassment!! Anyone who would go bother these people is no friend of mine!!! BTW let's talk about this STUPID AWFUL TAKE BY THIS PERSON" 6) Followed by you bragging to your Discord buds that you kicked their ass and this is totally like a Marvel superhero it's so cool that you gave them a well-deserved bitchslap 7) And just to secure the victory, you go along to TVTropes / Wiki / old posts to make sure the "right" information is given so they know they are totally wrong 8) And if anyone dares give you pushback, you immediately dig your heels in and declare that it never happened, and even if it did, you were at work, and even if you weren't, your targets deserved it because they got information wrong on a fictional event

Clearly, the problem is the haters. It cannot possibly be your own individual behavior that makes people take you in bad faith.

Edelstans:

This person - a moderator on the Edelgang server - unironically believes that the Nabateans should have been wiped off the map, by any means necessary. The Nabateans, as a race, should not be allowed any sort of power over humans, they as a race should be destroyed, and they as a race deserve no sympathy. They're just an "invasive species" that do not belong in Fodlan.

The context BWIIDT didn't include: people in the server at the time calling it out for being uncomfortable, gross, and reminiscent of Nazi propaganda.

I censored the names with different colors. Here I have three members of the server calling it out at the time. There's at least two other people who called this out in this conversation but I didn't include them because I didn't feel like digging up those screenshots.

And you wanna know the kicker? Yeah this guy doesn't give a fuck. You know how I know this guy doesn't give a fuck? Because I talked to him about it directly months ago and here's what he said:

(Different display name because he's using a nickname in the Edelgard server, but I just took these and the pfp is the same obviously)

"Had someone mentioned that to me in the server I would have addressed it immediately" at least FIVE SEPARATE PEOPLE mentioned it in the server and your reaction was to threaten to fucking ban them!

So I'll just follow up with what I actually said directly to him about this shit [Context: this comes shortly after HE LITERALLY SAID TO MY FACE that Nabateans are alien invaders who deserve to be genocided]

Me: "Hey even if you're ignorant that what you were saying is Nazi shit I am trying to educate you as someone who's family has experienced this trauma so you can be better informed and more careful in your language so you don't accidentally perpetuate harmful things in your community" Response:"ThE fAsCiSt EdeLcRiTs ArE tRyiNg tO siLeNcE MEEEEEEEE". I'm not kidding. He literally called me a fucking fascist in his """"victory"""" lap announcement to the Edelgard discord server. After he told me I deserved to be harassed and I could go fuck myself. Like. Yikes.

And now here's the thing that gets me. Of course rn they're probably screaming about how the evil Edelcrit mooners are so mean, obsessed, discourse brain-rotted, etc. They don't seem to comprehend that people other than them can be affected by racism and xenophobia and sexism and queerphobia and want to call it out. They think we bring this stuff up because we're just obsessed with discourse and we want to "score points" on them. To them, whenever they bring up Social Issues(TM) it's because they caaaaaare but when we do it we're just identity politicking harpies who hate a PNG and them and want to destroy them.

If my end goal here was to "win" some kind of stupid discourse competition then trust me, I would have dumped every screenshot and recording I have into a google drive link and spammed it every second I could. I don't do that because, guess what, not everyone sees this as some kind of stupid sports game they can "win". My only goal is to get you to leave people the fuck alone already when they block you and tell you not to interact with them anymore. I want nothing to do with you guys and I am only forced to engage with you because you will not leave me the fuck alone.

Man I really wish you would keep asking silly questions instead of this :/

My biggest complaint is about how people in the Edelgard Discord (the mod in particular) try to justify the Nabatean genocide done by the Agarthans/Nemesis. You agree it was fucked, but many others in the server (including one of the mods) will say it was totally okay.

Where does Edelgard even come in? The most I've talked about her is when I tag "edelgard discourse," or when an anon talks about her.

I speculate people defend the Agarthans because Edelgard works with the Agarthans, and she cannot look bad by assocation, so the Agarthans are made to look good so she's morally right in every way. That's speculation, and it has nothing to do with Edelgard's character or motives.

Nobody is defending the Agarthans either, not their modern incarnation at any rate. Some a skeptical of the idea that Sothis was justified in wiping out their ancestors (because that's also genocide). Some people do like to share headcanons that make Agarthans more sympathetic, but that has more to do with dissatisfaction at them being portrayed as one-dimensionally evil and wanting to add some nuance, not with defend their actions.

This is another mod of the Discord, in case y'all think it's just one person who enjoys indulging in some... let's go with interesting rhetorical choices like "civilized ones" or "slaughter and using corpses is fine sometimes if you think a group is terrorizing you."

So, miss Bethany is assuming that every single civilian Nabatean needed to die because of the potential, hypothetical, theoretical chance that they could have maybe tried to CRUSH this TOTALLY JUSTIFIED ~REBELLION~ (that totally existed and totally wasn't just a bunch of shitty humans being power-hungry assholes). Because they're Nabatean, and... no other given reason (other than the fucking INSANE idea that Seteth still "resent[ing] the loss" of NEARLY HIS ENTIRE FUCKING RACE MUST mean that ALMOST ALL OF THE NABATEANS hated the idea of humans ruling, what in the ACTUAL FUCK are you talking about).

Which is basically saying "Nemesis needed to genocide all of the Nabateans, STARTING with the civilians, because the Nabateans are all predisposed to being evil tyrannical oppressors and he couldn't take the chance of any of them being innocent because they probably weren't, hence they ALL had to die."

Rhea really is Schrodinger's Scapegoat - Simultaneously all-powerful and chooses to do nothing, but also utterly powerless in the face of time and events and therefore either way needs to be purged and slaughtered for the sake of HUMANITY'S FUTURE!!!

WRT the post - I just didn't really wanna go too deep bc at this point a good 75% of the time, it's a player projecting their own explanation for things the game deliberately left vague and unreliable and starts to fall apart if you think about it for more than two seconds. Therefore... endless discourse which IS dgaf about aside from potential spinoff sales.

WRT "Sensei I must have a representative from The Church and I wanted it to be you uwu" - it always seemed obvious to me that Edgey was, y'know, lying to By1eth to convince them to come along as a Plan B in case something went wrong with her "coup." Because having someone with a super-awesome sword and magic powers and has been believing everything you've told them would probably be a nice resource to keep in your back pocket as you ascend to the throne against the wishes of (already rather inept) prime ministers n' whatnot. But as we know - and as fandom has regularly displayed over n' over again - the concept that a character lies to the player for their own selfish desire is just not the way cute girlbosses who are also very sad and helpless and need you to take their hand operate.