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Shez ⚔️

When I was playing Three Houses, I didn’t have a strong attachment to Byleth and whenever I played the other routes I always alternated marrying people and whatnot, but like,

Some people got really attached to Byleth and whoever they married Byleth to first playthrough they just couldn’t marry Byleth off to someone else because they couldn’t separate them from said character *cough* Dimitri *cough* (that’s the one I’ve seen the most). And like, I never understood that? Byleth just didn’t have a personality in Three Houses and the relationships felt very one-sided and I just never understood people who said that?

All the other Fire Emblem avatars: Robin, Shez, Alear, and Corrin I could understand completely and I have my own personal ships for them because of their dynamics with other characters, but Byleth? Not at all, and any Byleth ship just feels like they’re relying on them and since Byleth doesn’t talk it just didn’t help

Now in Three Hopes, I can understand Byleth more (somewhat) and now I can sorta maybe ship Byleth since they actually talk and show a bit of personality. But before it came out and it was only Three Houses, I never got what people said about the Byleth ships at all

and people shouldn't have

People are so used to the Friendship Blooming Into Romance trope because it's in EVERYTHING, it's being force fed to them through medias. Everything has romance in it, everything has to have a love interest, everything needs to have that one thing apparently

It's not entirely wrong, it's okay to want characters to love each other in things that you like, but the amount of it in things is warping the way some people look at relationships. Sometimes, two characters can be the best of friends and not have any romantic interest in each other, and the community will think "ha they're in love and they're fucking"

Hopes is and will always be a breath of fresh air by not actually taking away the possibility of romance in a sense, but leaving it up to the player to decide (I will say that the subject generally isn't touched, at least to my knowledge, so this could be a bit of a stretch, hence 'in a sense'). I've said it three billion times since I completed the game for the first time, but I appreciate how it didn't NEED to be romantic, how romance wasn't part of how you progressed your relationship with those characters. It was platonic, but could be romantic if you chose it in your own head, up to you

People shouldn't be complaining about the lack of romance in Hopes, they should be praising it, celebrating it, loving it for what it is

Their relationship is so dramatic. They’re fated enemies and foils who fell in love instead. The head vs the heart. The divine vs the defiled. They unironically refer to themselves as each other’s other half. Their connection literally defies fate and overrides the fabric of time to save the world.

Byleth's Despair

Same, though perhaps in less harsh words lol.

Like, it's not that I don't appreciate those kinds of conversations. Dimitri and Marianne for example, I think are some of the best written examples of the kind of disorders they each have in this medium.

But it does get tiring that it's become this standard of what's expected, as if to them 3H said "even the joke characters like Raphael have sad backstories, that means FE has standards again" and it's just... not only shallow but also a bit ignorant to what FE has been for the past 30 years.

Fates - Xander is a parentified child in an abusive household that has more than once thought about ending it all; Camilla learned to equate love with violence and simultaneously holds too tightly to what she values while also putting people onto pedestals; Elisse does not act her (real) age because it's easier to play the super-cheerful child than confront the reality of her family; Pieri is routinely held down by dissociative episodes where she's in her mind remembering her mother's murder; Takumi is desperate for attention and validation from his two siblings who ignore both him and Sakura -

Tellius - Soren's always been Othered and was tossed aside by his birth father and raised by someone who complained about him being a burden; Marcia's continually hounded due to her brother's debts and so she had to leave the only place she felt she had a future; Oscar was responsible for raising his two brothers and gave up his position and future in the Crimean knights to do so; Shinon and Gatrie were both poor before Greil brought them in and Shinon suffers from a severe case of inferiority complex + his own issues with seeing Greil as a father / mentor

Magvel - L'Arachel lost both her parents from illness; Ross saw his home attacked and destroyed; Ewan and Tethys came from nowhere with nothing and Tethys often worked so hard her feet bled

Even if it was platonic, even if it was left up to the player to decide, I think I would have loves Houses a lot more had it done the same thing. One thing Hopes did right, and I’ll say it again, is not only allow the player to end the game with anybody as either gender, but also not make it romantic for those who didn’t want it to be

Of course Shez has their moments that could come off as romantic, but nothing is inherently romantic, it’s up to the people involved to decide whether an action is romantic or not. Like in Lysithea’s supports for example, she’s blushing more out of general embarrassment than actual romantic embarrassment, or the other way around if you want to interpret it that way

Ending the game with the same gender feels endorsed by the devs rather than something locked behind a wall like it was in Houses. I got so frustrated at the game because I as a guy could only actually marry one guy, and then just two with dlc (edit: two more added with dlc, my bad). I wanted to marry a bunch of the guys I got close to over the course of the game. I focused more on the guys as I played the game BECAUSE I couldn’t marry them as my chosen Byleth

In Hopes, that’s not a problem for me. I’m not marrying them right off the bat, I’m not spilling my gut feelings to them. I’m showing them I care, and I’ll be their friend. But it’s up to me to decide whether there’s something more behind that

I’ve said this before, but I hope Engage follows the path Three Hopes has taken. I’m not sure about games before Three Houses, since Houses was my introduction to the series as a whole, please add to this if it’s happened in the past!

Don’t get me wrong; Three Houses is still a fantastic game, but Three Hopes being much less amatonormative compared to its predecessors is actually such a breath of fresh air and a victory for people who couldn’t care less for romance (and just prefer platonic relationships) and those who are under the ace spectrum (especially to a demisexual like me), because this time, it’s your choice and liberty to see if there are romantic implications in the game or just a platonic one.

(I’m reposting what I’ve written in that one post I’ve mentioned below with some revision because I. Cannot. Stress. This. Enough. Please bear with me haha)

I just really love that Three Hopes did wonderfully despite the lack of romance in Shez’s side. In fact, I think it’s much better that the S-Support option didn’t make it through in the game, notwithstanding the interview of the devs. Shez didn’t need a romantic partner. They did not show any interest of being in a relationship. Like you’ve said, they see the whole cast as their comrades—friends that they didn’t have. They care for their friends and would go to such extremities and lengths just to keep them safe, but they would also not hesitate to keep them in their toes. And this friendship is deep, almost spiritual, bordering much more than the planes of just being plain friends. Almost like Studio-Ghibli friendships/relationships (at least, for me that is). The Merc Whistle and the letter in the finale proved that.

Don’t get me wrong though. The S-Support is a great feature, but after playing Three Hopes for hours, it just came to me that this game doesn’t need an S-Support. I don’t need an S-Support. The Merc Whistle and the letter in the end is good enough to represent Shez’s sincere and unique friendship with the sender of the letter, and that is more than enough for me. The Merc Whistle feature, in particular, is even unique because it symbolizes a deep bond, a mutual understanding beyond human comprehension, a piece of Shez that they willingly gave to the person they (you, a player) found a friend in, someone they knew they could trust in the depths of this world. When you think about it this way, it could also serve as an S-Support, just not in the instant-romance-kind-of-way. And that's what I love in this game, because it gives us more space, leisure, and liberty on how we want to proceed with Shez's relationship with the character we have chosen, just like you said. It's all on us—on our interpretation whether they remained as steadfast friends or something more—and I say that's a pretty big win.

What if Shez was present in the 3 Houses timeline ft. the Golden Deer House [2022]

Bonus: A close up + sth for male Shez enjoyers!