#f morgan

Her optimistic, happy-go-lucky nature makes her easy to want to hang around with, and her cleverness and strength form her into a strong unit. In particular, though, I liked that there was so much mystery surrounding her. While all of the other kids come from this straightforward timeline where all is nearly lost, Morgan stands apart from the group. You don’t know who or what she originally was, only what she would become later when she made it to you. Her presence in the Future Past DLC only exacerbates this, as you end up gaining an impression of her as a completely different person. It really goes to show just how much Morgan is shaped by her loyalty to you, and how much the way she was nurtured affects how she will grow up. In a way, Future Past Morgan kind of reminds me of Lilith. I mean, Morgan is oh so willing to go along with Grima’s plan until she comes across Robin in the proper timeline, and is struck by his kindness. Upon interacting with him, she seems almost shaken in her loyalty, and has to try and figure out what to do with herself next. 

I guess I just really like that so much thought was put into how Morgan would grow and change through different situations. It creates a contrast between her and other child characters like, say, Kiragi of Fates, because Morgan gets to be a bit more human in her reactions to these situations. Is she a happy kid who loves her dad? Of course! But this can be used against her, and she’s so unwavering in this love that she’s willing to put herself into misery to help him. I guess what I’m saying is that I would take an Awakening spin-off game fully clarifying Morgan’s timeline any day of the week, because I love Awakening’s dark future concept, and I would love to see what Morgan is like in it.

(I’m still not really sure whether or not it makes sense to count Morgan as being a canonical part of Future Past, hence why I’m kind of wishy-washy about whether or not Morgan fits the timeline...)

Favourite Moment?

Pretty much the entirety of her paralogue. The dialogue for the conversations with Morgan are just so well done that they always stand out to me as one of my favourite Morgan moments in the game. I especially like when she’s talking to Robin and trying to jog his memory, talking about how he looks so much younger and how she’s his special little daughter and all that. It really gives you a sense of the affection that they hold for each other, as well as Morgan’s overall optimistic nature.

Idea for a Story?

Ooh, that’s a toughie. I have many story ideas involving Morgan, but I don’t know how many of them I have that are Morgan-centric. If I had to pick an idea, though, I always thought it would be fun to explore where Morgan goes after the events of Awakening. Obviously in game this varies based on who she marries, but I think even just seeing what happens to Morgan going solo could be fun. 

After all, Morgan is in a unique situation in comparison to the other kids, and I think it would be a bit more confusing for her to figure out where she’s meant to go. Does she ever regain her memories? What’s her timeline like? Is her timeline doomed just like Lucina’s was? There’s a lot of questions that could be fun to use to flesh out a nice long story about Morgan. It’s one of those things where I don’t know if I have the power to write it (I love long fics but I’m incredibly reluctant to start because I always take forever), but if someone ever wanted to... I would be all over it. You’d catch me commenting every other chapter.

Unpopular Opinion?

I hear a lot that in contrast to male Morgan, female Morgan is kind of sadistic... and I guess I just don’t see it? Granted, when I played Awakening initially, I did two female files and then a male one before finally acquiring Fates, so I naturally spent less time with female Morgan... but I still never really got that vibe from her in her support conversations. She’s perhaps a bit pushier than her counterpart might be, but I don’t recall her being outright mean a lot of the time. If I remember correctly, too, I think her more direct moments come from supports with characters like Inigio or Brady, who aren’t necessarily quite so brave, so it’s possible she comes across as just oblivious on how to handle people like that. Morgan is very sweet and genuine, but I’m not sure if her people skills could always be qualified as 100%, so it’s possible she just wasn’t very good at communicating what she wanted to get across.

Either that, or it’s been so long since I played Awakening that I just don’t remember how sadistic she actually was. She was my sweet little daughter with pretty pink hair like her mom, how could she have been rough on others? 

Favourite Relationship?

In terms of non-romantic relationships, her and Robin are a given. I’ll admit that this is probably the one time I am weak to player pandering, but hey. I can’t be strong all the time. So often when there are parent/child relationships in fiction, they’re tempered by a kind of strain to make things more dramatic. And that’s fine, but it also makes it all the more refreshing when you see a dynamic like Robin and Morgan, who just clearly love and adore each other. 

I think the part about their loving dynamic that works, too, is that they’re not necessarily exempt from the drama. I mean, Robin is the vessel for the Fell Dragon Grima. Not only do they have the whole Future Past situation to trifle with as I discussed earlier, but they also have their vessel situation. Some consider it debatable whether Fell Blood dilutes or not, but I think it kind of depends. They mention in Awakening that Robin is the first one they’ve been able to truly get right, so it’s possible that now that they’re perfect, it can no longer dilute and Morgan could just as easily be someone who would be considered next. And even if not, the drama in their relationship also comes from Morgan’s loyalty to Robin. How far would Morgan be willing to go to protect her father and save him from himself? How far into the deep end would she go for him? The lore surrounding their family and the love shared between them makes for a pretty darn interesting relationship, so I find myself drawn to their depiction as a father/daughter duo.

Romantically... well, I don’t think they can support because Awakening was aggressively heterosexual, but I will carry over my affection for Nah/M Morgan to her as well. I think Nah’s calmer disposition measures up nicely against Morgan’s relentless enthusiasm, but their mutual cleverness and moments of maturity keeps them from having a relationship similar to that of Nah and Nowi. Morgan shows a clear intent to want to get to know Nah and make her happy, and Nah shows clear appreciation for all of the effort that Morgan puts into her relationships. If there is an insecurity to be had between them, I think they would squash it easily, and I could just see them being a very happy romantic couple. I’ve always liked the idea of them traveling the world together after the events of the main story, exploring and getting in tune with their faiths and just living their best life together. Those two deserve a happy ending, and I think they really get one when they’re together.

Favourite Headcanon?

I feel like Morgan, overall, is just a super open-minded person. She usually insists on trying something at least once before deciding she doesn’t like it. She tends to be pretty curious, to the point of always being eager to try a new food or interact with a new animal or learn about a new hobby. Even if she doesn’t necessarily find herself enjoying it greatly, she’s always grateful to have tried it, and appreciates the experiences she might have gained from it. 

Lilith:

First Impression?

I had a very wonky first impression of her, if I recall correctly. I remember liking her design (and I still do), and not really minding her in the brief beginning parts of the story… and then slowly but surely getting annoyed with her because of her MyCastle gimmick. I don’t know why Lilith needing to eat annoyed me above all other things, but I remember being needlessly annoyed about it. If I had to guess, it was because I was still in the era of being excited about like, accessories and stuff, so having this little creature want to eat things all the time for a feature I didn’t even use was a little aggravating. 

But when she met her in Birthright, I remember actually feeling... pretty sad. I don’t typically cry at fiction, and I still didn’t when it came to Lilith, but I definitely felt something closer than what I would usually feel. I wouldn’t even say that her death was even all that well-executed, considering one of my personal complaints about Fates is the underuse of Lilith, but it still made me feel for her and for Corrin. All she wanted to do was to protect her friend and make sure they were happy, and she was willing to pay with her life if it meant getting her to the future that they needed to survive. I guess in the end I found myself humanizing Lilith beyond that game mechanic, and my impression of her changed from there.

Impression Now?

Lilith is an extremely underrated character and I wish they could have used her more. I actually just bought the DLC about her just so I could learn more about her. I haven’t played it yet, of course, but I’m really excited to start. Having learned her lore after the fact, I gained a lot more interest in her and the way her character was constructed. 

She’s very much an outsider in her world, and while she definitely has friends, Corrin is about the only person she’s able to really attach to (and she can’t even tell them of their relation). Still, after being at the side of her degenerated father for so long, she puts much of her effort into trying to be a good person and fixing the future that her father is trying to cause. She’s not always perfect at it, and she may at times seem uninvolved, but the contributions she makes are vital to the army’s survival. To me, she’s just such an obvious case of the “person choosing to become a better person because they are loved” trope, which I am... a sucker for in so many different ways. She truly does deserve to be happy just as the others get to, and I hope one day she and Corrin truly do get to have that heart-to-heart so they can come together. 

As far as I’m concerned, Lilith is a crucial part of the big Nohr/Hoshido blended family. It goes Xander, Ryoma, Camilla, Hinoka, Corrin, Azura, Lilith, Leo, Takumi, Elise, and Sakura and I will take no criticism on this!

Favourite Moment?

I’m a terrible little gremlin who loves to spoil things for myself, so I must confess that I have actually seen the scene where human Anankos tells her that he loves her, and that’s my favourite Lilith moment. Like I said, I’m a sucker for characters that are learning to be loved, and just watching Lilith’s change from the simple act of being cared for by someone made my heart explode. The fact that she even wants to change so suddenly truly speaks to how starved for love she was, and presents the idea that Lilith was never truly an evil person. She makes herself apart of another common Fates motif, which is the idea of chasing this idea of a father who’s never going to come back properly. At that point in the DLC, there’s nothing she can do to make degenerated Anankos not pursue human Anankos and destroy him, so she does the next best thing: she goes to protect her sibling and make her father’s aspirations for their future come alive. 

It’s a powerful moment to me that goes mostly unnoticed due to being in the DLC, but it’s a bit of Lilith characterization that I absolutely adored.

Idea for a Story?

I’ve always kind of wanted to write a story about Lilith meeting everybody at the Fortress after Corrin takes her in as the “baby bird”. Like I have this idea in my head of Lilith being in dragon form for a few days, and Corrin nursing her back to health, until one morning Flora and Felicia go to check the stables and then there’s just this... random girl sitting in the stables. She looks hungry and tired so they take care of her, but ultimately Corrin gets brought into the fold to decide what they will do. As you can imagine, Gunter is probably initially pretty against the idea of keeping Lilith as apart of the Fortress staff because it’s supposed to be incredibly secure, but I don’t think Corrin would take no for an answer. 

One scene I did have in mind for this as I recall was one where Lilith is watching Flora and Felicia in her first few days there, and just... observing them. They’re sisters, after all, and (since I usually write F Corrin just for personal convenience) she and Corrin are sisters, so it pays for her to try and understand how sisters interact with each other. Only Corrin doesn’t know they’re sisters, so some of Lilith’s behaviours strike as her being a little oblivious to social cues. But because it’s Corrin and she barely has a malicious bone in her body, she doesn’t really mind, even if Jakob is a little baffled.

Unpopular Opinion?

I actually think her Birthright death was done slightly better than her Conquest one. Could I explain my reasoning for this? Probably not, no, but the emotional impact of it just happened to work better in Birthright for whatever reason. I guess I found that in Conquest it felt like it came so much more out of nowhere. In Birthright, the setting is just right for that kind of surprise assassination that Corrin needed to be protected from. Like, you’re right in Castle Krakenburg. You just ran in on the troops training under Hans, you’re bound to miss a few stragglers and nearly get taken out. 

In Conquest, if I remember correctly, it’s... around that level where you fight a whole bunch of Faceless on the Eternal Stairway? And Corrin just nearly gets taken out out of nowhere, only to be protected by Lilith? I don’t think the scene is executed horribly in Conquest, of course, but I do remember it feeling much more clunky. Even Xander’s lines in that moment weren’t so great, feeling a bit too stiff and blunt for his character (a translation problem no doubt, given that he otherwise tends to be quite gentle with loved ones). In the end, I just ended up feeling a bit off-put by it, and ended up preferring the Birthright version.

Favourite Relationship?

To be honest I don’t really have that many romantic partners I’m crazy about for Lilith, but in terms of familial relationships... just any of the Fortress Foursome. Literally any of them. Also Gunter, she deserves to have a proper father figure, too. I know I said I love the idea of Lilith being apart of the blended Nohr/Hoshido fam, I also think of her as being in the Fortress Fam, too. There are varying different ways she would work well off of the others living there. 

For Jakob, this was done in fanmade support conversations I believe, but I could see him being especially nice to her subconsciously just because she reminds him of Corrin. I don’t foresee them being best buddies, but I think he would end up quite protective of her, and as a result, she would grow to truly care for him too. She might be off-put by his harshness at times, but she would see him as a good person at his core.

I think Felicia would probably just attach to Lilith whether she wanted her to or not. It’s well established that people are often annoyed by or even dislike Felicia due to all the trouble she causes. She doesn’t get a lot of compliments and tends to attach pretty quickly to kindness. So I feel like Lilith was probably nice to her like, a good handful of times and Felicia just decided that they were going to be friends. Which is fine by Lilith, honestly, because Felicia is good at heart and extremely loyal. She’d probably still be a bit shy in the relationship, with Felicia handling most of the talking, but she’d still enjoy having her as a friend. I feel like apart from her and Corrin, they’d probably be the closest of the two, just because Felicia is so open with her love and Lilith is so hungry for it.

I could also see Flora and Lilith being fairly friendly. Lilith is gentle and sweet but ultimately approachable, and the same goes for Flora. I think their more isolated natures could actually draw the two girls together, with Flora at first thinking of her as a work friend, but then finding that she actually enjoys their conversations a lot more than she expected. Lilith would see Flora as someone extremely caring and reliable in any time of need, and Flora would see Lilith as someone who embodies so much of the kindness needed in the world. I honestly think Flora might even grow protective of Lilith as she does for her own sister, because someone so beloved by animals but so withdrawn on herself is probably someone who needs a gentle and loving hand. 

And then of course there’s Corrin. Corrin probably spent the entirety of their childhood going out of her way to try and make friends with Lilith. Lilith probably tried to reciprocate, albeit awkwardly, but the relationship turned out rather warm in the end anyway. Corrin used to run out to the stables and claimed to want to hang out with the horses just so they could spend time with Lilith. In turn, Lilith was probably forever leaving Corrin special, often homemade presents in hopes of cheering them up when their siblings couldn’t visit or when they were feeling particularly bored. They never quite got to connect properly as siblings growing up, but I think they still ended up as good friends in the end. 

As you can tell, a lot of these are headcanons because... Intelligent Systems decided to deprive us. But hey, I can dream a little, can’t I?

Favourite Headcanon?

Lilith doesn’t necessarily need her little orb, but she keeps it around because she likes it. It’s her equivalent of a warm rock for a lizard. She treats the orb like it’s a prized possession, and while she will let you touch or even admire it, she would be very upset if she ever were to lose it. It’s kind of like a comfort object in that way, and she wants to keep it close to her at all times.