Himbo Lover

Treehouse’s localization of Fire Emblem Fates is infamous already, but how much was changed or removed is often still misunderstood. So I’m compiling my long posts about it here!

Here is a link to my sources post!

Where I get translated stuff!

Here are links to posts I’ve made so far!

Before Branch of Fate Story Changes

Birthright Story Changes

Conquest Story Changes

Revelation Story Changes

Character Changes: Takumi

Character Changes: Peri

Character Changes: Niles 

Shura’s Inconsistent Age

Character Ending Changes 

“Shortly after the war, Brigid renegotiated its diplomatic arrangement with the Adrestian Empire, ending its service as a vassal and becoming a full ally. As part of that agreement, Petra, queen of Brigid, was wed to Hubert, Marquis Vestra. Some say that the marriage was purely political, ordered by Emperor Edelgard, while others insist that it was of their own accord.

Although they led busy lives, and sometimes lived separately. Still, their shared home in the western Fódlan village of Nuvelle was filled with their many children, suggesting a loving union.”

The implication that Petra might’ve been forced into a marriage with Hubert by Edelgard, possibly as a condition for Brigid’s freedom, is kinda fucked. Sure, it’s equally possible that they chose to marry one another but it does seem like a pointed decision from the devs to leave the origins of their marriage up in the air. For a route that’s supposedly about choice and free will, this ending sure doesn’t feel like it. I guess free will is only a thing when you’re a privileged noble and not a WOC political hostage.

This also reminds me of how Edelgard tells Dorothea in their supports that she (the former) might have to marry for political purposes.

And it doesn't make any fucking sense!

Why would you feel the need to marry for political purposes when your intent is to be emperor of ALL OF FODLAN!? And part of that rule includes removing any barriers to how people would like to live their lives??? Does the mere implication of political marriage not ring the same tune as marrying for Crests or inheriting for Crests or any other Crest slop?

It shows either how easily she lies, or how she's stupid or how the game is inconsistently written.

Connecting that, like you said, to Petra and Hubert getting together, it shows such a gross treatment of someone who's allegedly your friend. Why would a political marriage be necessary? Why would that be part of the agreement to end Brigid's vassalage and become an ally? Why does Petra then have to live with Hubert in Nuvelle and not at her actual home in Brigid? Even if she goes back sometimes, it's still only part time, and furthers the implication that she's bound by some sort of contract.

I’d say here gacha needs to be stopped it’s the cause but then I look at how parasocial FE fans are toward 3H students why the defend these lines these not real artwork so hard and that’s not a gacha, why is this behavior getting worse? You’re an analyst do you have any idea? And of course Hazbin hotel, The amazing digital circus all of it nothing is safe. And I remember Steven Universe being bad when I was younger but not to this level

From what I've seen, it looked to be Chinese fans that were most upset about the potential new addition, but international fans were fairly excited. Something about the Chinese fans saw that the character would potentially incorporate references to WW2 Japan? Idk, I didn't look too deep into it.

But the other large factor about it I saw was that the fans in question who were upset also didn't want anything to detract from the existing characters, so the new addition ended up canceled. Which... yeah that's pretty damn parasocial. Like, yeah, that's how it would work, every pre-existing character would get a smaller slice of the pie in order to add new ones. But to so fervently be against there being a new one added that the company really truly canceled it? Pretty weird.

Anyway yeah, people are nuts about that in FE's case too.

I think this kind of thing is downstream of celebrity and influencer culture, tracing all the way back even a century ago. People writing letters and being obsessive over their favorite writers or silent movie stars. Then it evolved to going to their favorite musicians place of residence. People started fan clubs for cult leaders and serial killers. Now we have an entire career genre for influencers, whose job is to bank on being well liked by the masses before being talented in a niche field or art form.

But regardless, it all comes down to the same idea: these are people who do not have the same relationship with you that you think you might have with them. And nothing defines that more than fictional characters. They don't exist. They themselves are part of an art form and whatever interpretations come as a result of that. They fundamentally cannot ever have a connection with you.

Good lord, the FE fandom is the worst I've ever been in.

A new lazy-eyed rep character is here and Twitter is already making jokes how ugly he is and how he should die, and the Reddit post with him got locked for some truly disgusting jokes about him with some deleted comments even saying how "R-worded" he looks. Can we just nuke this fandom and start over Biblical Noah style?

Combining these asks!

Here's the Reddit post in question: https://www.reddit.com/r/fireemblem/comments/1ukdlg0/is_this_contender_for_the_most_chopped_fe/

And here's the new guy, Fabio (going by how his Japanese name is translated):

What's also timely about this are the fairly popular posts that were before his reveal about attractiveness of FE characters on the main sub.

Post about men in Fortune's Weave looking more mature this time around: https://www.reddit.com/r/fireemblem/comments/1u9yat1/something_i_just_realized_is_that_so_far_we_have/

Post that was made in response to people calling the men ugly and the women having to all be beautiful: https://www.reddit.com/r/fireemblem/comments/1uasuno/since_people_were_worried_yes_we_do_have/

And now we've seen him, we have a myriad of reactions:

1: https://www.reddit.com/r/fireemblem/comments/1uknaze/all_4_lords_have_a_primarystarting_retainer_with/

2: https://www.reddit.com/r/fireemblem/comments/1ukwoas/another_fabio_post/

3: https://www.reddit.com/r/fireemblem/comments/1ukgb7v/can_we_be_more_careful_when_discussing_the/

It's been fascinating to see! Fascinating and also really frustrating.

Like my anons say, people are being pretty damn ableist about this. No matter what Fabio's situation is, be it a lazy eye, a glass eye, prosthetic, or whatever, it's clear that he has a disability of some kind.

This entire debacle also reveals how warped people's perception of what makes a character attractive. The men in Fortune's Weave are, so far, on the exact same level of general attractiveness that the men in 3H were! Why are people pretending that a lot of men in 3H weren't also unconvential looking?

Hubert, Caspar, Lorenz, Raphael and Ignatz were ALL historically clowned on for their looks, even after they got their better timeskip portraits.

Alois and Gilbert aren't exactly runway stunners either; in fact, I argue they're pretty hard on the eyes, given their incongruant face shape and terrible facial hair.

Pre-timeskip Dimitri also has pretty dumb hair!

After that, I know this is a hot take, but a lot of the men aren't even hot! I argue that Byleth, Ferdinand, Linhardt, Sylvain, Jeritza and even Shez are extremely plain looking to the point of being bland (I remember people accusing the artist of Same Face Syndrome when they saw Ferdie and Sylvain for the first time) Ashe and Cyril are cute but cute isn't the same as hot, SOOOOO many of the male NPCs are either boring or downright ugly, especially the ones that Hopes added.

Really, the only noticeably hot guys are, from my perspective (assume timeskip for students): Dimitri, Claude, Dedue, Felix, Seteth, Yuri and Balthus. Maybe toss in Hanneman for people who like older guys, but that's still pretty niche.

Anyway the point is that characters don't have to look conventially attractive for people to like them eventually.

And you know what? GOOD! YES! Add more weird or atypical looking characters! Add more characters with different skin tones! Eclectic clothing and accessories! Disabilities, scarring, missing limbs!

Good character design is not just about what people find sexy, it's about so much more! Cast cohesion, consistency with the characterization, cultural inspiration, use of colors, hair placement and textures, skin tones, face shapes, body proportions, basic design elements, etc.

But regardless, all of that doesn't even matter because Fabio... doesn't even look ugly!!! Like, I'm being serious! I really do think people are only calling him extremely ugly because of his lazy eye which, again, if that is his situation... yeah, it's pretty ableist! He's leagues above the ugliest that the previous Fodlan games had to offer!

And looking through all of this really just reminds me how easily I get ticked off with the fandom during these speculation phases, because people get... dumb, to be blunt. "Oh every lord has a companion with an eye/sight problem, does that mean anything" "Oh does it mean anything that there are more mature men this time" no I don't think it does, because if there was any meaningful significance to those choices, they'd be advertised in a bigger way besides 480p Twitter posts.

I think FE fans are not at all used to seeing diverse character designs and are grasping at any reason to connect it to the plot instead of the obvious elephant in the room being the art team is slowly starting to give a fuck about diversity this time. Now if only that can properly extend to the female characters, because even if they have kooky hair and different skin tones, they all still look conventially attractive, and that's pretty bothersome.

As a ride-or-die fanboy (straight cishet guy btw) of Steph Sterling who's been with them since 2016 and never left since, I always hate getting slop like this on my feed. Steph was a crucial reason I got pulled permanently further to the left than I already was pre-2016 by getting me away from GamerGate slop that I was tentatively uncomfortable with (I never agreed with it 100%, I was always a feminist and Democrat even then), but they were the final nail in the coffin and also was a voice for me in how predatory and ableist lootboxes/gacha monetization is in general. It's especially annoying because it misses the fundamental truth of the matter: Steph is losing subscribers because they came out as trans in 2021 when a lot of their former audience was AngryJoe-esque gamerbros (aka rightoids who hate any kind of "wokeness" in video games), and the algorithm being so hostile to LGBTQ+ people to begin with leading to them being shadowbanned (not that it even matters as Steph has kind of retired from YouTube to focus on an actual career as a game industry writer and reviewer, good for them, they're doing great!).

But I think what annoys me the most about these fucking rightoids is... they cannot fucking be honest with themselves to save their lives.

You can learn a lot about somebody's morality based on what they endorse on their feed. And from the YouTuber in question who made the video, you can learn from their topics that "I'm a colossal piece of trash who is scared of losing my special status compared to minorities so I'm going to openly pander to the alt-right versus actually doing anything substantial with my life".

I don't get why people like this genuinely think they're underdog heroes or in the right or whatever. They're so obsessed with wanting to keep the world that they've grown up with stay the same forever and ever that they're willing to cast human lives into the wolves' den as "necessary sacrifices" so they don't have to think about questions that make them existentially uncomfortable anymore, despite the fact they'd play the victim if subjected to the very shit they subject others to. It's evil behavior and selfish as hell, and they can't even be honest about it that what it boils down to is that they're scared of whatever that's different to them that they perceive as a threat to their status.

Like… at least ADMIT you want people who scare you and you see as a threat to your status and privilege to die and that you're the bad guy, solely because you're scared of whatever exists without your consent. You can do that, just don't fucking spew bullshit how much of a "good person" you are when all you want is people you don't like to stop existing because you don't feel comfortable around them.

But nope, they have to look like they're in the right (pun not intended) for what's a fundamentally selfish goal, all because they just want everything they've grown up with to stay the same forever. There's a quote from a book I love named Blood Meridian, where the main villain (Judge Holden) effectively says "Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent." This isn't to illustrate him as just evil (and believe me he is EVIL), it's to show how pathetic he truly is that he only feels happy in the scum of the barrel of human civilization and cannot stand it whenever somebody isn't corrupted by him. And I feel people like that cannot even be fucking honest about it to themselves or anyone else because they're banal cowards who want praise for what's fundamentally selfish motivations at the end of the day. You see this a lot with the performative pseudo-left as I like to call it, but at least it's under ostensibly good intentions, while this is just selfish dreck dressed up as heroism because they're too much of a chickenshit to actually want to confront the impact their choices and values have on other human beings.

As a last note, to steer the discussion ever-so-slightly in the direction of this blog, it reminds me of people who were so offended over Conquest having the main character shown the devastation they caused and forcing the player to sit with the ambiguity but those same people turn out to be Edelgard knob-slobbers who act like they've done nothing wrong and that they're a perfect example of how FE "should be" in regards to "grey morality". Despite the fact the difference between Conquest and CF is that the former doesn't sugarcoat the human cost of your actions and also forces players to confront the implications of their views of "necessary evils for the greater good" head on while the latter openly shields your virgin eyes from having to see them and subsequently having to feel bad. But the former is shat on because it "ruins the grey morality of the game," apparently? Like, are we really so fucking frail and selfish that feeling bad for the consequences of your actions is something to be avoided while leading a fucking conquest, to the point we complain openly about it whenever somebody shows others' complaints, i.e. like it's out of an 80s toyline cartoon how the complainer is somehow always wrong?

At it's core, it's a self-fufilling loop of wishing to paint themselves as the hero to justify their views, and therefore coming to the conclusion that their views are already justified... regardless of logic, ethics, reason, or the impact those views have on other people. It's infuriating as somebody who agrees with you on why Conquest rocks and CF is perhaps the worst narrative in the entire franchise, and yet people clutch their pearls so hard over it because they don't actually want to feel bad for the consequences of their actions and are too cowardly to at least be self-honest that it's fundamentally about selfish motivations.

One can connect this to an even higher level of language and rhetoric as well.

The whole reason why immigrants are often shortened to "migrants" and called "aliens" is so people born in the country can feel comfortable being terrible to other human beings. It's classic dehumanization.

As you say, even the left wing does this.

The reduction of people's real lived experiences to "forced identity politics" and the complete and total appropriation of the term 'woke', which is used BY Black people FOR awareness of injustice towards Black people, is something shared alike by all sides of the political spectrum. Every time I hear someone who's allegedly progressive say "that's Woke 1 behavior" or "we left that stuff behind in Woke 1, we're in Woke 2 now" I want to sock them in the mouth.

It's entitlement to a narrative that they want to experence, a fantasy that they're grasping for that never existed nor should ever exist.

The identities of everyone exist and matter to how we're humanized and how we're treated. There is no such thing as a complete divorce between ideology and identity, and to try to claim or advocate for world like that is pigheaded cowardice.

What matters is how it's handled moving forward. My fellow progressives can be convinced of how they're going about this in the wrong way when it comes to people's identities, and the general ignorant masses can be taught with no fucking filter that they should care about people.

Conservatives are a lost cause, they need to either find out how fucking insane and deranged they are, or be moved aside for the betterment of humanity.

And connecting it to FE like you do, I do read it as similar. It's entitlement to a kind of story that they feel the series should follow; a misrepresentation on the basic level that 3H has any morally gray standing, when the game itself does a terrible job at portraying it, and the fandom at large doesn't even fucking adhere to it considering the significant amount of Edelstans and how the general audience still think Rhea's a tyrant/a monster/a crazy bitch/needs to be deposed for anything good to ever happen.

Every FE game has funny moments, every FE game has hype moments, every game has magical, high fantasy tropes, and-most importantly-almost every game name drops 'Fire Emblem' within their stories at some point.

The only thing that Engage has that sets it apart is its fun intro song and the final cutscene when summoning all the Emblems again (which even then, it's basically the Emblems' own version of final map dialogue tbh).

And I can't lie, it made me a little upset. I don't remember C&F's Warriors Support/extra dialogue, but in Awakening, any vaguely gay behavior by Frederick (the poster) is played for laughs. Discounting NPCs and enemies for a sec, when I replayed Awakening two years ago, I noticed way more homosexual subtext between other PCs, like Sully & Miriel, but not Frederick. Maybe just because I used him less, but I can't shake the feeling of better choices. Back to Niles & Rhajat, it's frustrating that they didn't appear, given how huge their romance options were for the FE series.

"One Time"...are you kidding? Even beyond Fates, Three Houses has multiple homo- paired endings, including ones that do not involve Byleth (primarily Dorothea instead). Engage has literally everyone be bi for Alear, but also plenty of sexual misconduct. I mean, homo-behavior between characters outside of Alear. Like Alfred and Boucheron, Etie and...I think it was Goldmary or Yunaka, and so on. I do wish FE was more blatant about homosexual characters (love me some bi-s, but I would also like purely homo- characters), but it's simply baffling to say FE only "Said 'GAY'" ONCE.

And outside of Leon + the somewhat more nebulous subtext of Ike & Soren...there are plenty of PCs that could have fit over the recurring miniboss archetype. Like does Heather not exist? The possible translations of Marty's ending title??? I'm sure there are plenty of examples I'm not even thinking of, but like, man. FEtube is so cursed to me.

I watched that video a week ago!! Didn't much care for it myself, and it's from the same creator who also did an Eikþyrnir (FEH) video for how the FE series treats male sexuality, attractiveness and fanservice; that video I liked on the first watch, but going back to it, there's also a LOT of biases and such that leave a very bitter taste in my mouth.

Like, there's a lot of jabs at specifically Fates and Engage that one can clock very often in those videos once you look for them. IIRC he called Ivy an "Industry Plant" which is such a chronically online/stan twitter sort of insult, and genuinely false because Ivy IS a popular and well liked character, the Choose Your Legends polls are just very heavily based on rallies and concentrated support for certain characters and she wasn't seen as a priority.

Then in the video you mention he calls Corrin and Alear of all characters something along the lines of coddled and privileged, when talking about how Ike stands out among the lords and like...

We don't need to go to cuckoo land to know Ike's a pretty singular and unique lord in the series, even to this day! And yes, there's connections to be made with how him being non-traditional as a lord and as person can connect to his queerness. There's just no need to also dig at, y'know, other literal queer main characters in the series! Hell, Male Corrin and Male Alear are themselves both voiced by gay men in English! Can we not afford to be a bit sensitive and sensible when glazing our favs?

And you're right regarding the other stuff too. Leon's not coded in anyway, he's very clearly gay. And he was able to exist as such after the groundwork was laid by subtext in Raven/Lucius and Lyn/Florina, the heaviness of IkeSoren (and Ranulf), Heather, and then, as you say, Niles and Rhajat (both of whose explicit queerness were themselves very groundbreaking IMO, but were victims of censorship and sanitization in localization).

Similarly, you're right about the Chrom and Frederick thing. I mean, for starters, the whole "Frederick commissioned a poster of Chrom naked" thing, while funny, is a localization creation. It's just a regular portrait of Chrom's face in the JP version. Furthermore, the two don't actually have a support in FE Warriors, so I assume what he meant is Frederick's support with Camilla where the latter compares her love for Corrin to Frederick's love for Chrom (she does in fact say that Frederick "loves" Chrom), but like... I love Camilla, but that lady's nuts! She has no healthy barometer for what love is! I mean, she's very sapphic-impliep and canonically off her rocker, so she probably would have amazing Gaydar in real life, but these are characters written with agendas in mind: as you say, Frederick's obsessiveness with Chrom is played for laughs, even when it dips into homoeroticism; hell, especially when it dips into homoeroticism, because anything that looks gay is funny, and it shows in how much of that humor was in Awakening (practically overflowing with it in the DLC festival maps).

And it really shook me because, like, obviously this was a group chat, but, like, I think to a degree, I think it's because they just don't want to consider it in any way because they consider it closed and shut, and because they derive so much of their emotional worth around being the ones who are more rational than the normies and smarter than the rest, that the idea to confront that something they've taken at face value isn't, and they generally misread something, is impossible for them to emotionally be able to stand. They just cannot stand it when something exists that isn't to their liking, that still succeeds and is antithetical to what they think is normal about the world. I think from that, part of why people get so emotional when talking about, like, Odovakar on Reddit and whatnot is because they think it's irredeemable because it's about a story about horrible people just doing things and getting away with it and being excused at every turn. Hell, even my long-time ex-alt-right redeemed friend, an objectively smart person, just misses the point of it. I did a little digging, and I think part of it is just how much of it is that people just do not know how to put an effort into analyzing a story and expect the story to do the effort.

So if you don't put in the effort to analyze faith, obviously it comes off as incoherent because everything's beneath the surface and nothing is really said outright. But at the same time, we have people so belligerently, vociferously refusing to consider its merits. I think part of it is that they just are afraid of what others will think of them if they admit that they were mistaken on anything. Because so much of Fire Emblem fandom's political capita involves never admitting that you were wrong and always being objectively in the right, like factually so, when taste and art does not work like that. Maybe gameplay, but not art.

And I think part of the reason why many people — like, people have accused me of being a stuck-up twit who loves the sound of his own voice — is because I'm not afraid to be openly vocal about what I like. I see no reason to be ashamed of it. People have issues with me thinking something is good and making a genuine argument that they can either acknowledge that or shut the fuck up and get out. And that's genuinely fucking antithetical to what they want because they want a shared space where we can just talk about what they hate. And it's just baffling to me, really, just how emotional they get over me just contradicting what they feel when it's not real.

It doesn't exist what they think it does. And they just get so emotional about that because everything they accuse Fates of is really Three Houses, and they just don't understand that. They don't understand why it is like that. They just take a special offense to that. And I don't know, it's just baffling to me, really.

Because I just think it highlights a fundamental insecurity and fear that they'll somehow be removed from the fandom if they even acknowledge this or admit their feelings aren't objective. Because this fandom is so fucking bad acknowledging that their tastes aren't objective truth, that the very idea of admitting that they don't know what they're talking about in terms of social emotional capital is fucking terrifying to them because it signifies a loss of control of the status quo and admitting that they generally don't know what they're talking about because they don't. I'm not saying they do that out of malice, I'm saying they do it out of some sense of superiority. I'm just saying that they can't have a wank because Fates literally dashes over what they feel is understand about the world because they don't want to look like a nerd or cringe or an idiot or whatever, and they're just ashamed of acknowledging it in a way that's not ironic. And I think that's just weakness on their end.

I think they're very fragile people that they can't just acknowledge what this means to other people, that they have to push us out of these fandoms, that they have to mock what we like, that they have to shame what we like. And I think part of it is because I just think it's a fundamental weakness on their end that they just cannot accept what others like.

People are in general extremely uncomfortable with encountering and facing an opposition to a deep seated belief. Since Fire Emblem is the favorite series of a lot of the people you're interacting with, a huge part of their identity, at least online, is how they interact with and interpret the games.

Introductions to a new view, is foreign and disquieting. It's a skill that's learnable and growable to not immediately jump to arguing and defending one's long held opinion when a contrary one appears (of course, one that's mostly for moments like this where the stakes are pretty low and not like, political and affecting people's everyday lives).

"She was 13!" Okay, ignoring the fact that we've had young rulers doing impactful stuff in the series before (Roy and Leif were 15 in their games, and Sanaki herself was fucking 10 in Path of Radiance and 13 herself in Radiant dawn), given Edelgard's unnaturally and impossibly flawless plans when carrying out her duties for her eventual war, the logical answer is that she started making preparations for it a good while before enrolling in the academy... and how old is she in White Clouds? 17. Still technically a minor, still young, probably was 14-15 when she started making significant steps in her plan. And that's being fucking generous in regards to her genius. So what's another year in the past to be potentially complicit in the Tragedy?

"You think a kid killed a king and his entire entourage?" If she was there, she obviously wasn't there alone, the Slithers prove as much. And even if she wasn't involved like she says, well... you can say that you weren't involved and still be watching it go down while not doing anything. Sure, you may not be participating in the crime, but you're sure as shit not fucking helping.

"You're gonna trust Dimitri's judgment when he's clearly delusional?" Funny how his judgment is perfectly 100% sound when it comes to rightfully declaring the innocence of Duscur, but suddenly when Edelgard is being implicated, his knowledge of events that he witnessed in person is called into question.

Like... do I think Edelgard herself beheaded the king? Idk, probably not. Even with her two Crests, I don't think she's strong enough to do that as a young teenager going against a fully grown man with the Crest of Gorilla Strength.

But Dimitri was also a child, probably saw a weird ass masked figure standing there amongst the flames doing nothing but watching the carnage, and assumed they were involved or responsible. And maybe she was implicit in some regard! Who knows!

The point is, given that the writers stuffed an agenda full of work that would logically take a normal adult closer to a decade to even prepare to implement, into a character we're supposed to believe was able to do that in half the time as a literal child, with the only help she had being her weirdass personal assistant, a cult of shapeshifters and eventually a mass murdering Grim Reaper? And this all went unnoticed by, not just the two other nations, not just the allegedly "tyrannical" Church of Seiros, but also her own fucking political opponents in the Empire headed by the Prime Minister himself???

Look, I'll just quote what he sent me in our DMs because it says it so well:

I mean, there is the villainess isekai genre that often points out how insane standard otome game plots are when viewed not as a player but as an outsider, but it gets excused in the game because it validates the player. A villainess may simply be a woman who stands in their way and acts in response to the player’s decisions. If such a goofy genre is calling out the power fantasy of such games, it’s really pointing to how players have been effectively trained to not think about things that much and only care about the emotional beats of a story rather than the logic of it. That said, having a character say one thing unchallenged but then have the worldbuilding say another is going to create issues when players prioritize what a character says rather than the evidence against them they would have to go out of their way to find out. And when the developers then confirm that the worldbuilding is meant to paint said character as a villain rather than the heroine they thought she was… there’s going to be a fight. Three Houses relies on this. Edelgard being a villain is meant to be a twist as confirmed by the creators. The worldbuilding is done to support fighting her, again confirmed by them, yet the player can just go along with what she says and end up establishing an authoritarian autocracy when they were led to believe they were liberating the people. People will argue “everyone’s a hero from their own POV,” but fail to understand how self-centered that sounds, even psychotic considering Edelgard’s deeds. Someone who says she fights for the weak and silent, but believes change must come from her rather than from them as she forces them to fight and wills everyone who doesn’t bend the knee to her. But to see that, you have to pay attention to what the world around her is saying… which in CF includes a subtext of her lying to and manipulating everyone around her therefore she should not be taken at face value. And with otaku, they love taking things at face value. It’s not even a recent thing, just look at how Evangelion became everything the series was arguing against with fans even wanting it to be more like a typical mecha anime by Shinji manning up or viewing the characters as mere archetypes. The Rebuild movies, as a result, come across as another attempt to get the point across to a fandom that missed it the first two times. Media literacy requires effort, emotional effort does not. Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children does something similar, but far worse. In order to make the characters recognizable to the fans when the game was old, they intentionally wrote the characters to represent how the fandom viewed them. So Cloud became emo and Aerith became a saint, losing the nuance of their characters which the remake project is trying to bring back. Otaku want simplicity, not nuance. Reward without any real effort, validation for their deeds and for it to still be called mature.

And that just… baffles me? But it also explains why so many fans think 3H is "morally grey" and Fates isn't when it's largely the opposite, but because it requires more effort to reach the truth than otherwise…

God, it just sucks to be somebody who adores FE Fates's story when most people decide its irredeemable garbage because they decide that the effort to put into reading its subtext when it requires it is too much work or whatever, especially when the problem is, it's a lot easier to just write off subtext as "baseless fanon" if it doesn't support their personal emotional context. But unfortunately, I learned early how important immediate first impressions and sometimes having the subtlety of banging a hammer on an anvil are for your readers, because most people reading stories, sadly, are fucking morons half of the time who will only get it if it's directly said to them up in their faces, and even then, there's the possibility others will twist that idea into something it's not because they want to reject basic reality and substitute their own.

Yeah, it's generally such bunk that people harp on about 3H being this morally gray thinkpiece/work of art, when in reality, this only applies solely to Edelgard.

Rhea is never opposed to Claude in any substantial way. Claude may get frustrated with her sure, but a significant part of his development in Houses is realizing that he doesn't have to tear down the Church of Seiros or take out Rhea to fulfill his ambitions, he's perfectly conent with her direct successor, Byleth, continuing her work while he goes back to Almyra to become king.

Dimitri is not particularly concerned with Rhea either beyond allying with her faction out of convenience, given that both the church and Faerghus are direct, explicit targets of Edelgard.

And most of all, Claude and Dimitri are not actually opposed either! They only fight because of the ~chaotic warfare~ that Edelgard pulls, including in Azure Moon when she makes it look like the Alliance killed a Kingdom messenger. Couple that with Dimitri suffering heavily from five years of unchecked psychosis, and he's not chummy with anyone. Yet notice once he begins recovery, what does he do? Immediately helps Claude and the Alliance after liberating his own kingdom.

It's literally just Edelgard where allegiance and ~gray morality~ is in play, because every other faction is against her. Four primary factions in the war phase and it's THREE against ONE. And the only reason the factions against her don't immediately all join up is, again, because of Edelgard. The church can't join anyone without finding Rhea and Byleth first after the empire desposes of them, Edelgard's allies throw the kingdom into chaos through subterfuge, killing Dimitri's uncle and framing him, and the Alliance is split because the empire is pressuring the territories nearest to them. It's not out of beliefs or ideals that no one else really joins together, it's because Edelgard does everything in her power to make sure they can't.

And in Fates, it's literally simple. Join Hoshido or join Nohr, accomplishing the broad goal of achieving peace in unique ways. Or maybe take the third option, going at it alone for a bit while convincing people from both countries to band together and see the truth behind the artificial conflict. Boom. There is no 5D chess playing, no instances of all the pieces falling into place for one single character, no arbitrary and outright idiotic justifications for why anyone simply band together. It's just the tried and true bitter, vengeful and mad dragon making his misery everyone else's problem, and because he has the powers of a god, it takes a LOT of work to undo.

It can include all of those things, but on an individual scale they're all a bit different.

Respecting queer people and their identities is social support. Upholding the social contract, being genuinely a kind person.

Financial support... well, I'd say that is very specifically donating to organizations to help queer people if they're in need of funds to maintain a basic human standard of life (housing, food, clothes, etc.) On the smaller, direct scale, donating to a queer person's gofundme's or other direct donation accounts to help them if they're been kicked out of their homes and such. That itself carries the risk of directly giving your money to someone you don't know personally, and it can have negative consequences (I think Emily Gwen got caught for being a scammer for example?).

Some would confuse financial support as "these big brands have rainbows on them and make posts about pride month and how love is love" and while I personally don't take too much umbrage with those things (I think they're a good indicator of how the public feels about queerness at the moment), they aren't actually financial support for queer people as much as it is trying to appeal to a market and get money from a specific group. It can get insidious given that queer people demonstrably as a community struggle with retaining money and jobs to actually buy luxuries and stuff.

Now, activism is the very political one. It pretty much encompases the prior two, with the agenda of "queerness is perfectly acceptable, please end discrimination on a social, economic and political scale." It connects to organization within local political groups, fundraising for queer friendly politicians, offering safe spaces and information about what being queer is, and helping raise awareness on the challenges that queer people face in a society that doesn't like us.

Now, when I talk about LGBTQ support, I try to imply the first one (social support and respect) rather than push anyone to go be activists or donate to places and people. I'll share donation links and helpful guides, but not on the expectation that everyone who sees me share that stuff will pitch in or turn their life around to dedicate themselves fully to the cause. It's mostly for the chance for more and more people to see what things are happening and how to get more educated.

But I think its okay to acknowledge that Conquest is the villain route and that there is no moral justification for it. You end up leaving so much death and destruction behind and conquer an entire kingdom for basically nothing. The hoshidan royals and even most of their retainers are generally more good, kindhearted and moral people than the nohrians. I think it needs to be said that it is okay to like the villain side more because the characters are more interesting.

Um, I don't really agree with that.

Xander is still contentious because everyone is convinced of a mess of a character that doesn't exist thanks to localization, Corrin's still the most disliked avatar in the series, Azura has baggage tied to her thanks to the cousin reveal, and Camilla? She's Camilla, to say that people on the whole are fine with her is just not true.

Leo and Elise are liked, but even then, Leo gets saddled with flanderization a TON and Elise gets attached to the discussions on the unflattering romance aspects of the game. Hell, ALL of the siblings, Nohrian and Hoshidan, get wrapped up in talks about how Fates is the "incest" game.

So no, I don't think they're really well liked. Even under fanart, there's bound to be comments like "Man Fates would've been so good if it weren't dogshit thanks to [arbitrary reason X, Y and Z]."

And yeah sure the gameplay of Conquest is lauded, but it's balanced out by the fact that Birtright and Revelation are both heavily hated.

To tackle the "villain route" thing, I really don't care for that read on it, because... yes you are doing bad things. But an actual villain route would justify it endlessly, corrupting the hero. Conquest doesn't do that. It constantly shows, through Corrin, that what they're complicit in is wrong, that they must stomach heartache in order to fulfill their wish for peace. It's the same in Birthright, only the heartache is centered on a different subject, that being their home and adopted siblings, rather than mostly centered on justice and morality. Even then, Birthright has its own realizations in how it contributed to the war starting in the first place, concerning its isolation and rampant xenophobia.

A common thread in all routes is that something must change, and it's not as simple as kill Garon in order to reach a peaceful future.

A tinfoil hat theory I have is that part of the reason why Verdant Wind is almost copy paste Silver Snow, is that Crimson Flower was added late due to wanting a route to side with her (confirmed by interview, IIRC I believe it was the Koei staff specifically that wanted it) ended up taking more developmental resources away, they couldn't delay the game any more than they have (it was teased for 2018, then delayed to spring 2019, then actually released in summer 2019), and here we are.

It's why CF has only one unique cutscene and the rest are CGs compared to the other 3 routes having 2+ unique cutscenes each, why Nader having the cutscene he has doesn't quite make sense, why CF is so much shorter than the other routes, and so on.

And... If my memory isn't failing me, Three Houses is the original/initial name for the game, while the Japanese title Fuukasetsugetsu (translated to "Wind-Flower-Snow-Moon") was itself a localization, i.e. added later. Perhaps added later to accomodate the newly added CF path, when originally it was only the three houses, and thus only three routes. Would make it fucked up in hindsight considering Three Hopes in Japanese is also just "Warriors: Wind-Flower-Snow-Moon" and there's no fucking route for the church, so the naming scheme remains thrown out the window.

Regardless, it does sort of add up! The devs started falling for Edelgard and so added all the stuff they felt they needed to add for a route where you follow her to exist. They looked at their options (Silver Snow was the foundation of the narrative and worldbuilding so they couldn't risk cutting too much of that and Azure Moon is the most character compelling route through Dimitri alone), and decided putting Verdant Wind on the backburner was worth it.

You're dead on regarding that! This may be conspiratorial, but an example is how I think the reaction to Leonie from 3H was so negative because she didn't worship the ground that Byleth walked on, that it influenced how it took her so long to get an alt in FEH, and she's still the only student to not have her base form in FEH either, directly missing the Golden Deer banner back in December.

Characters even simply not immediately fawning over the main avatar protagonist is taken as a personal offense, whether people want to admit it or not.

And because avatar/self inserts are now intertwined with modern FE, I think you're absolutely right in thinking how people will feel alienated or gatekept if there wasn't one.

I don't think you're weird for holding an opinion, no!

My personal stance on the matter is that 3H characters are no more and no less "deep" than the other modern FE games. Hell, maybe also including from FE6 onward, tbh. All casts have variance in both objective writing quality and what kinds of tropes are used, the latter of which the fandom has mostly made it clear what they like and don't like.

If I can be so bold, I suspect what might contribute to your opinion on the FE3H characters is connected to how the game is made. Like I said, the characters generally aren't any more complicated than the ones in previous games; the difference with 3H is that the devs made it a point that knowing anything substantial about the cast is unavoidable.

Take your typical FE game. You get your units, some of them are plot important and remain so for the rest of the game, but the rest you have to put in actual effort to unlock and form cohesive analyses on their characters, how they fit in the world, what their presence in the game says about various things, etc. Early on, you had to rely on secret interactions and recruitment dialogue, if they had any; besides that you had to extrapolate based on what class they occupy, what are their stats, what's their starting equipment. Then as the series evolved, then came more dialogue, larger casts, support conversations, and base conversations. More stuff was added, but almost all of it was at the behest of the player to dig into and make connections towards.

3H doesn't do that. House leader introductions, monastery exploration, advice box asks, dining hall, tea time, overly detailed info/notes screens, and most notable of all: the inclusion of the secondary cast giving very generic inputs in the story if they're still alive, and character specific paralogues. All of these things have massive incentive to be done, because they're also tied to the "game" part of 3H, with motivation, increasing stats, recruitment, etc. So incentivized, since you're never gonna have a strong team if you don't personally instruct and mold your units, that it starts feeling mandatory, actually.

The issue then comes from the fact that, since this cast isn't actually deeper than the casts before or after it, you get soooooo much repition.

You know what you need to know about, say, a LOT of the Blue Lions just by doing supports and general interaction, but the paralogues they have then repeat those very same character beats. For example, Ashe has chapter 3, his paralogue and his support with Catherine, all tackling the same thing; it's meant to be one long chain with an end, but it comes off repetitive and tedious, not to mention potentially unsatisfactory if one doesn't actually do the paralogue and Catherine supports. That's so much dedicated to one thread, that it becomes exhausting. Raphael's supports with Ignatz and the two's own paralogue also does this, as does Hilda and Cyril, Seteth and Flayn, Hubert, Dedue, Lorenz, and on and on and on. New information is hardly ever being offered, it's just presented in different contexts, one incentivized (hard to ignore) than the other.

So when you're being smacked in the fact by the same backstories and nuances over and over again, of course things start to feel one note. Would you say that's accurate, or did I miss the mark? That's just how I see it, when asked the question.