#hoshido

Basara'Noka

(Also, sorry for the very aggresive tone overall here; i really needed to rant).

It still fills me with hatred whenever i remember how, in the comment section of one of your old Reddit posts (detailing the loc changes made to Conquest), someone pointed out that they found it odd for Treehouse to have removed the plot point of the Nohrian citizens living in Hoshido getting hunted and killed en masse (given that studio's trend of removing some of Hoshido's negative aspects elsewhere), only for someone else, WITH 20-ISH UPVOTES, to respond with a comment saying (roughly) "and the funny thing is that, since every single Nohrian in the game is portrayed as a monster, Hoshido still acts perfectly reasonably throughout the game".

At least when that one dumbfuck said that Dimitri shouldn't be allowed to breed because "he might pass his madness onto his heirs", he got downvoted and perma-banned from the sub for it; this one literally advocated for mass racial genocide, and not only got away with it entirely unpunished by the mods, but got rewarded for it with 20 people co-signing his bullshit.

All this does is remind me of how unfortunate the social media position of Fates fans is; most of the people who cared about the narrative left the fandom by 2018, the few remaining ones could never have made meaningful changes with how little in number they are, and the majority left are composed of gameplay-goons who have no idea what the fuck they're talking about when it comes to anything to do with the game's narrative, just accepting the "story and characters suck, gameplay is good" mantra (and related criticisms) mindlessly from their favorite Youtubers (who themselves largely just rip off other people's surface-level, and often objectively incorrect, criticisms), and actively contributing to the bad-faith.

If the mainstream portion of the Fates fandom was less cucked, they would have very likely gotten the "FE Reddit is banning negative Engage posts for or against the game, due to toxic posts towards it and it's fans almost always causing an influx of equally-toxic posts in defense of the game and themselves to get made in response" situation (but for Fates) rolling back in 2017, instead of actively helping the game be the target of the most idiotic and ill-informed criticism of the fandom, pretty much permanently.

But then again, maybe that wouldn't have been a good thing.

Back in my debunk-goon phase between 2021 and 2023, i spent two years intermittently writing debunks for a lengthy Reddit series of critique posts of Fates and it's DLC's stories, and for a major Youtube video that covered Conquest's story in between gameplay, and posting them on Reddit; the former got no meaningful traction, and the latter just got me a bunch of people saying "everything in that video was insincere satire, with him believing in none of the criticisms he made of the story" and a mod deletion six hours after posting (supposedly due to me calling him an idiot ocasionally, whenever he said outrageously stupid shit about CQ's story; whereas it's totes fine for him, at the start of the video, to joke about the IS devs being pedophiles due to Elise being explicitly stated to be an adult in localized Fates but supposedly not in JP, a joke borne out of his ignorance that she's also stated to be an adult in the JP supports), with the only meaningful effect i ever achieved with those being that MAYBE the Youtube debunk was a contributing factor to the guy deciding, two weeks after he left a short comment making fun of my post (confirming he saw it while it was up), to stop covering FE stories when making videos on the games.

Sure, the fandom vitriol would have both been higher in number and more vicious than what could ever have been done in reality, likely leading to less bad-faith (if only out of fear of reprisal), but it would also have very likely emboldened the remaining critics too; it might have even just failed to meaningfully change anything, like my (and most other people's) attempts at clarifying the story always historically have, leading to even more negativity for no extra reward.

People in this fandom are EXTREMELY comfortable with rampant dehumanization and justifying warfare that even overt discrimination is fucking excused and celebrated, and it's preeeeetty nuts.

Like, it's the same chapter where you have to save Azura, someone who was treated as an actual Hoshidan princess, from captivity and likely harm. And it's in spite of the fact that, though she said that Ryoma (and likely Hinoka and Sakura as well) tried to stop what was happening to her, it says A LOT about how aggressive Hoshidans can be if they can defy the de facto king... or it says something about Ryoma's tunnel vision and negligence that he couldn't save Azura from her situation.

One unambiguously good thing to come out of the Fates localisation, an aspect I sincerely think it deserves praise for, is the main two kingdoms' names.

"白夜"/"Byakuya"/"White Night" and "暗夜"/"An'ya"/"Dark Night" may work in Japanese, but keeping those names for the English version, whether phonetically (why does the European country have a Japanese-sounding name? what does either name mean?) or semantically (why are these countries' names just a colour and noun combo? is this a Montenegro reference?), would've been a terrible and needlessly clunky decision. "Nohr" and "Hoshido" are fantastic replacements: short yet effective.

"Nohr" resembles "noir", invoking both the correct tone (darkness literally; bleak gritty ruthless criminality metaphorically) and cultural associations (avoids specifically French vibes by spelling the word differently, keeping more of a "generic European" flavour).

"Hoshido", to an average Westerner, will sound similar to "bushido"/"the path of warriors" (which also happens to be the name of Ryoma's personal skill), enough to bring to mind relevant concepts (Japan, honour, samurai). Additionally, the average weeb will recognise that "hoshi" means "star" (a small source of light in the night, appropriate), and that therefore "Hoshido" is "the path of stars"… in other words, the path of making Ryoma activate Astra 2780387 times per chapter, correctly setting expectations for the Birthright route.

Both names are perfect.

The only minor issue with them that I can think of is that "stars" kind of go against the concept of a "white night"/"midnight sun": if the sky never goes dark, stars never come out, right?

Then again, the Japanese term for "polar night" (the opposite of "midnight sun") is "極夜"/"kyokuya", not "an'ya", so maybe that particular dichotomy isn't what they were going for, anyway. My recollection of Fates lore isn't too good; does Hoshido get normal nights? Can they get any decent sleep without blackout drapes? Do they ever get to stargaze?

YES! I agree, I really love the localized names for the kingdoms, they understood the assignment!

Also Mikoto was only holding the throne for Ryoma because she was the Queen Dowager, not Queen Regnant.

Oh, I don't really hold delusions that there was meant to be some deep commentary on Hoshido for its values.

Fire Emblem as a whole prefers to lean into the whole "the leaders and royalty promise to do better and the endings say they do" type of ending rather than spend too much time on deconstructing the systemic issues of their nations.'

However, it's still present and because there is such specification in multiple places and because it shows such a contrast with Nohr, I feel confident in saying it's intentional.

Like yeah Hoshido is traditional and isolationist, they have restrictive policies and archaic views that were expressed through its characters. Nohr runs counter to that in being expansionist and merit based, not caring who you are so long as you can fulfill what's required of you. It's why so many cross-kingdom retainer supports are full of moments where one of them goes "why is THIS shmuck a royal servant?" before coming to a resolution out of respect despite the differing values.

Thank you for the tidbit on Kisaragi, it's appreciated!

I definitely understand where you're coming from! It helps that Hoshido geographically is actually situated pretty high up compared to Nohr, so the heaven-like, otherworldly nature of its people and culture would bolster your thoughts on the names being a bit out there.