I Love Traumatized Boys

- What would Matthias think when he saw it

- What if Lambert also had one

bonus scene from An Ember's Brief Warmth extended director's edition.

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a) projecting their own parents at the expense of the characters, exaggerating the characters mistakes or blatantly discarding aspects of the character

b) demonizing them to the degree that the only acceptable way the characters can atone for their mistakes is through death or through their children completely disowning them

Gilbert is the most blatant example of this; he’s the bottom of the barrel for many fe3h fans for understandable reasons. I dunno, it rubs me the wrong way where people don’t even try digging a little deeper into the mentality or circumstances around his actions. People fail to acknowledge he’s a blatant by-product of being raised in a toxic culture that encourages/glorifies self sacrifice, treating him as an static unchanging embodiment of Faerghus’ rot to be condemned (when push comes to shove, he willing to make up for his actions)

Gilbert loves Annette so much, he carved wooden dolls for her (in their B-support), he always spoke about her to Dimitri (DimiNette B-Support), he left his family because he felt like he *didnt* deserve her unconditional love. His self loathing and need to punish himself is what harms not only him, but the people who care/depend on him. 

Another example is Sylvain and Miklan’s dad, Matthias. It’s even worse because take everything I said about Gilbert and multiply it by tenfold. That guy can’t win with either son (and his respective fans + faction) - he’s wrong for not disowning Miklan sooner, he’s wrong for disowning Miklan at all, he’s wrong for “favouring” one son over the other, he’s wrong for not caring about his son, he’s wrong for caring about his son too much. It doesn't matter if Matthias’ 1st wife and unborn child died in a violent Sreng raid, or he was experiencing unfathomable grief that warped his personality to be an ice wall, or he has to protect the Kingdom’s border from invasions in the harshest territory, or he was similar to Sylvain and held ambitions of brokering peace with Sreng in his youth. He’s Just A Manifestation of Faerghus’ Toxicity™. Ten million metas/reddit posts/tweets about how Sylvain/Miklan were victims of Crests (completely sanding down their own flaws and actions as characters) but Matthias is Horrible and Abusive™ to Both Sons so therefore he Should Die

Faerghus is a biting critique of Japanese society/culture wearing the aesthetics of European-esque high fantasy; to the knights honour system (see the backlash against Hosono Masabumi, a survivor of the titanic) and prioritizing your King(dom) over your personal relationships, Gilbert and Matthias embody how that system harms *everyone* - they’re also victims of that system!

The only way that the kids can find healing from that system is: a) being completely cut off and isolated from their dad and never taking through any of their issues b) killing their dad/their dad dying because the parent can’t unpack their familial baggage from a coffin. It annoys me to see people disregard Annette’s *core* motivation (reunite with her dad) or how Sylvain expresses clear distress when Matthias dies in Golden Wildfire and in his Hopes paralogue. That the *only* for their characters to progress with their trauma is to completely get rid of their dads, that them trying to fix their relationship is completely worthless - all because the audience is pushing their own frustrations onto Gilbert and Matthias. 

Parents in media get boxed into either virtuous saint or horrible abuser - rounded, flawed parents such as Gilbert and Matthias where they’re far from good parents but they’re not exactly the complete worst are actually pretty uncommon, so it’s frustrating to see fans try to box the two into the clean comfortable boxes of Bad-Parent™ and not bother trying to look deeper into the rationale or greater circumstances around their actions.

For the fanbase that clamours about grey morality, all of that gets chucked through the window when the parents make tangible mistakes (flaws that aren't just “too overprotective” or “afraid to see their child grow up”) which end up creating actual messy grey dynamics between parent and child. Do fans not wanna see the characters *trying* to resolve their conflict with their parents (no matter how successfully/unsuccessfully), that even in spite of their mistakes they still love their parents? You can dislike the characters, that's fine I don’t need everyone stanning my favs - hell, Gilbert isn’t even a fav of mine. Especially when these are *the* characters from the route with the central theme of, I don’t freaking know, *trying to move on from the past and atoning for your mistakes*??? Seriously??? I’m not saying there’s *nothing* to criticize Matthias or Gilbert for or that the hate for them is unjustified - but the discussion I see about them is just dogging on the two for being absolutely terrible Dads who Are Awful™ (completely flattening the circumstances around their mistakes) or mischaracterization just to make them more palpable to bash. TLDR: The game has excellent messy-yet-well-meaning parent characters, how fans talk about them Annoy Me a Lot actually