Byleth asks! Do you prefer male byleth or female byleth?
M!Billy definitively!
First because while his outfit is a mix of weird and bland, it's something that doesn't make me wonder why IS/KT intends to continue with sexualising their female protagonists when F!Robin got a similar outfit to a male counterpart.
Also, sexual dimorphism plays a large part, F!Billy is a woman, so her eyes are really big, too emphatise how she is, y'know, a woman! On the contrary, because M!Billy is a man, his are around the same size as everyone else.
Yeah, no.
Then, because poor M!Billy gets erased in some fanon spaces and it makes me sad for the poor guy :(
But ultimately, I dig the idea of gender role reversals in Fodlan, M!Billy ditches a life of blood and swords (aka living as a merc) to become someone who guides and nurtures lives (as the next person in charge of GM and Fodlan in some routes).
Byleth is no Ike expy, he won't take Jerry's role (not that Jerry even taught him anything about running a company thought) but instead will get closer to his mother's side of the family and ultimately follow in his female, uh "relatives/people who are tied to his family" 's steps to become a kind of "super nun" as the next Archbishop.
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Looking at the F!Billy's desert alt - even as a backpack -
While I think the artwork oozes "smash melons to sell juice to whales!", contrary to M!Billy, F!Billy's desert alt's theme is apparently "merc" stuff, when M!Billy was all about Khadein's magic academy.
M!Billy was thus picked because of the professor/teacher/school background, but F!Billy is apparently picked in a supposed "merc banner" because she had been a merc, and that's the thing she has in common with Marisa.
Interestingly, "professor" M!Billy's closely associated character is Worst Mom, aka, Billy's lizard family and background, when "mercenary" F!Billy's closely associated character is... Jerry.
I'll have to wait for voice lines, to see if she talks about anything else bar being a merc, or says she finds her life as a professor way more fulfilling than her previous life as a merc, but this makes me wonder -
If M!Billy is picked for CYL, some people theorised he'd get a Jerry-based outfit, since F!Billy got the Sothis one.
But that'd mean Brave M!Billy, a Billy at the end of his journey, would praise/appreciate the merc lifestyle, even if it goes against canon? Or maybe he'd basically have lines missing Jerry and/or saying positive things about the dude?
or FEH pulls what Engage did with M!Alear and gives him Rhea's outfit, with her crown, collar thingie and 55 tassels lol
AU during that time where Jerry was trying to woo Citrus by telling her various anecdotes about the "outside" world, he wanted to surprise/impress her by singing an old ribald Faerghan song.
"surely that's not something you'd hear, cramped in the monastery as you are, right?"
Citrus nodded, while she doesn't know this Faerghan song, she knows an old "Adrestian ballad", which was actually an old sailor song, rude as fuck that was most likely what inspired the Faerghan version, her "mother" taught her.
Jerry runs to Rhea asking her what the crap, but she handwaves everything away, after all, it's just a song, and children love to listen to songs!
Dumbfounded, Jerry doesn't know how to react with Citrus makes him promise to help her teach the "kid" a lot of songs too, maybe their kid will be some sort of bard, or even better, sing in that opera thing in Enbarr!
Of course events happen, Jerry doesn't teach any song to Billy but when they hear them sing a song with Manu, he makes a mental note to later ask her if, during her free time one day, she could take Billy to the so-called "opera thing".
Billy thought something important was going to happen, but no, it's just Seteth ranting again.
Hopefully he will never know she was the one who told Rhea that carrying a cat would make students less stressed if they have to talk to her.
Catherine and Shamir look at this and say it's just a normal year, even if Catherine is surprised at Lady Rhea having picked a Gautieron and not a Hresvelgion.
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I know it wouldn't technically fit with the timeline but -
Fodlan AU :
Jerry doesn't leave when the kid is 2 weeks old, but waits a bit, and tries to ask around how "normal" babies behave, because Billy is still abnormally calm.
"Maybe they're broken or something ?"
Some nuns throw him dark glares, his kid is alive, how can he say something like that?
Rhea spends time with them, giving bby!Billy Sitri's old :) golem plushie, even if Jerry thinks it's trash ("what the crap is that thing??"), bby!Billy seems to appreciate it, always trying to reach it whenever Rhea, or some monks/nins, dangle it in front of them.
One day, Jerry finally manages to convince another doctor to examine his kid but forgot that Rhea was playing with the baby. Jerry becomes a bit tense, after all, Rhea already grilled him on him asking around if Billy is "normal" even after she told him they were alright. Just before Rhea could ask what was going on, bby!Billy suddenly started to chew on her hair, distracting her enough ("good, my ears aren't still showing!") to forget about Jerry and the doctor.
Garreg Mach doctor was so amazed that this random nobody baby was chewing on the Archbishop's hair that he stopped thinking for a bit, before recomposing himself, assuring Jerry that his kid was alright, after all, it's normal for babies of that age to try to discover the world by putting stuff in their mouths.
Happy that finally, someone else than Rhea found his baby "normal" and "alright", Jerry sighed in relief. However, only Aelfie (who wanted to spend time with Sitri's child) kind of freaked out because no, even if Billy is Billy, they should unhand the Archbishop and not munch on her hair!
Both men tried to pry Billy out of Rhea's hair, while she was just saying them to let them be, the baby is just having a bit of fun !
Jerry then realised - while Aelfie was trying to make Rhea reconsider because she has an important appointment with Count Varley and definitely can't show up with a baby drooling all over her - that sure, Billy doesn't laugh nor cries, but at times, they want to play with their odd :) plushie, and at other times, prefer to play with the stuffed bear, what if Rhea wasn't just saying nonsense, and, despite not laughing, Billy was having fun?
Imagine a world where Jeralt wasn't an idiot and he didn't kidnap Billy away from Rhea. Supreme Leader's war would have ended before it could begin because Billy would have known Eggy was spewing bs.
It's all his fault Fodlan didn't immediately improve. Great job, racist dumbass.
Anon,
in that AU, Billy would have told Rhea about the gremlin in their head, and the plot would have been radically different lol
More seriously,
Billy, despite being raised as a... well, how Jerry raised them, knows that this "crusts put a value on people's worth" spiel is shit, because Billy themselves have the rarest crust ever, and they're not immediately promoted to "ruler of the world", hell, they must still listen to people and can't do whatever they want.
The leader of the KoS is Jerry through Rhea's favoritism, but before that? Who had that role? Alois, a crestless random, was Catherine's superior.
When Hanneman discovers Billy has a crest? Well, they're still a teacher, just like Crestless!Manu.
"but the church promotes the crust system"
"wtf are you taking about"
But since we can't have that, or have Billy appreciate what they are supposed to appreciate as seen through Heroes/Engage aka some sort of peace, sense of belonging and guiding/teaching stuff to people instead of being a sword for hire, the plot happens.
Also, given how Billy'n'Jerry must have travelled around during their time as mercs, or were at least in Remire where people weren't that preoccupied about crusts and what not, but as randoms, about what they're going to eat tonight or if they weren't going to be attacked by bandits or mad scientists who will turn them in guinea pigs, the "Sacrifices must be made, I'm killing people for their sake" would fall hollow, especially given what happens to Remire which is located, again, in Arundel...
@fantasyinvader wrote recently a post about Billy's status as a character/avatar hybrid and how the focus on one status... neutralises the other, but that's what we have with this character (and everyone in Fodlan tbh, save for the Lions thanks to Nopes and the Nabateans) : Billy being the player's avatar must bend to the player's will, so they will be able to join Tru Piss and feel sad uwus about fighting the red Emperor, that's how the game was designed.
This fucks over Billy as a character, especially in Tru Piss, but also, partly in Winds - assuming they did the "help Seteth" quests, his paralogue or just talked to the various students/NPCs in the monastery - and yet, allows for the artificial "route split" or "pick your lord" choice.
TS' Serenor did the thing better with "have a character + let the player pick which character they want to follow", without scrubbing Serenor's personnality.
