#unbalancing-act

Fruity Headcanon Prompts | accepting

(also asked by @cynthero)

The answer to this question is also complicated. As heir to House Vestra, the noble house closest to the Adrestian Emperor, one would think Hubert to be nationalistic and proud of his homeland. This doesn’t seem to be the case though. In many of his canon lines, he shows disgust and disapproval of the Adrestian nobility (and all nobility, really), and is one of the few people to openly recognize that Petra is a hostage of the Empire. He hates the duplicity of the main noble families, including his own (his father blindsided him by agreeing to the Prime Minister’s coup, after all), and this distaste also comes out in his conversation with Petra when he points out that the Empire would rather pretend that Petra is an honored guest. There are several lines in canon where Edelgard talks about how useless her father is, so Hubert would adopt the same mentality toward him.

However, having no territory of his own, Edelgard stands in place of his “home.” She could move to Almyra and he’d easily abandon Adrestia to come with her. She could forsake the Empire and he’d do the same. He takes on whatever ideals she has and carries them with the same nationalistic pride one would have for their own country. Everything she does is just. Everything she thinks is good. She is the superior princess and future leader. Hubert wholeheartedly believes that she will dismantle the church and the Crest system, unify Fódlan under a new banner, and create a meritocracy. But if she doesn’t? He’ll serve her for the rest of his life anyway, because it’s her that he’s loyal to, not her specific ideals.

Ironically, Hubert is very proud of being a Vestra. He idealized his father before he betrayed the Emperor, and now desires to replace him as the new Marquis to right his wrongs as the perfect, obedient attendant. I say ironically though because under Edelgard’s new system, Hubert would not automatically be granted his position as her closest advisor. He seems to recognize this after Edelgard declares war and sets her plans in motion, as he appears to be more desperate to carry out the undesirable facets of her regime, finding this to be where he’s irreplaceable. This desperation peaks on the Crimson Flower route, when Byleth seems to push him aside. He keeps working as he always has, but with the looming fear that in this new meritocracy, someone will be better for Edelgard than he is. Eventually he does settle with the idea that he can’t do everything for her, and withdraws to be simply her servant when someone else takes his place as closest friend and - perhaps - romantic interest.

Is Hubert a hometown hero in Enbarr? No. He’s well-known there as attendant to House Hresvelg, and he’s always stood out, appearance-wise. But most find him unsettling at best, and for the sake of not getting caught doing something they shouldn’t, avoid anyone from House Vestra. He would move away in a heartbeat, if Edelgard chose to go elsewhere.

A number of students and faculty seem very desperate to learn faith magic after the previous month, so a large Faith seminar has been put together. But how does one explain how having faith in the Goddess gives one access to white magic to foreigners who don’t believe in her? Or how does one explain how having faith in a cause or person can do the same if you’re in a pinch? How are you meant to explain this or parse it out if you’re there to learn? [Grants Faith +1]

It was a one-time event, he’d been told. Normally, they wouldn’t have given seminars like this. So, high off the success of his previous snippet of information driven from the rumor mill, Ike heads off to the... admittedly massive church at the fringe of the monastery.  ... Absolutely not as gigantic as the Goddess Tower itself, of course, but that wasn’t done by human hands, and so there was no basis for comparison. 

It was a mistake. Oh. How it was one. 

The first indication he’d seen of trouble was when some of the priests had started looking at him like he’d walked in covered in pegasus dung.  Luckily-- priests were priests, and they’d stuck far away from him, which suited him just fine. What made his face fall, however, was the fact that the other members of the church, who’d he’d talked to and had seemed quite nice really-- seemed to lose their cordiality as they stood next to the ones of higher faith.  Ike wasn’t good at reading facial expressions, but he could tell when someone was staring at the back of his head. There were a lot of people staring at the back of his head. Add that to the growing berth the crowd was beginning to give him, and he’d found himself with a cozy ring of complete emptiness whilst the rest of the entire hall was packed with students. Leaning back, arms tucked under his head at the neck, he looked up at the delicately painted murals of the Goddess (Oh, they had one here, too...) and tried very hard not to groan.  He later does so with impunity, as the sermon reaches the second hour. He’d gotten the gist of most of it, really. Saint Seiros is the big one up there, a bunch of other Saintesses and Saints, wait no, apparently Seiros wasn’t the one up there-- just the Apostle. Cool.  Nothing could go wrong with that. (A lot of things could go wrong with that.) Oh yeah, and the church was neutral ground for... every other territory, apparently. At least they’re a small one, so there’s no risk of Hungry Begnion wants a pie of everything and they’re more Holy so they get Everything. Also cool. (He hopes.)  The rest of the talk is about faith. Finding faith, many ways of faith, faith in other people, faith in the goddess who grants Holy Magic.  Ike’s pretty sure that things don’t work like that, but what does he know, he’s not from around here. Different Goddesses and all that.  ...When exactly are they going to have a bathroom break, so he can kind of leave without bothering anyone? 

A brief gaze around has his hopes crash and burn. Almost everyone else seems to be entranced with the main event, some of them even pulling white glowy strings from between their fingers as the (presumably) holier-than-thou energy practically seems to evaporate off them in waves. Tentatively, Ike pulls out his fingers to mimic some of them, waggling them to see if there’s anything. Nothing, unfortunately, and the student whose efforts he attempts to mimic lets out a soft cry of despair as their magical orb winks out, as if blown out by a particularly stiff breeze. Ike feels daggered looks at the back of his head, and he doesn’t have to turn to know it must be the hawkeyed priests. He very wisely decides to rest his fingers on the bench, completely flat.  Goddess. Let this end. He’s so bored. He hasn’t prayed to her in ages. He’s praying to her now. Relieve him of this torment. He’ll fetch her... A packet of birdseed? 

He doesn’t even know what the other one wants. Order? Does he have to recite numbers? 

fruity hcs.

febail cares very HEAVILY about his reputation. i’ve gone into a fair amount of detail behind the idea in this post here, but tldr, febail creates a tough guy image for the hc motivation that he believes he needs it to be able to be taken seriously in his job as a hitman, and he needs this job in order to take care of the orphans under his care. 

Lana: “You [Febail] were taking care of orphans before, weren’t you? That’s so wonderful, Febail.”

Febail: “Yeah, well that was Patty‘s idea, not mine. I’m really not all that big on kids, you see.”

Lana: “Hah… I know better than that. I saw all those crying children clinging to you when we were leaving the Manster District. You’re like a father to them, you know.”

Febail: “S-Stop it, would you? I just… Look, I gotta get going. I’ll see you around.”

(Febail leaves)

Lana: “Haha… You’re a good guy, Febail.”

the above conversation is a more clear in-game example of how much his tough guy image is pivotal to him. even when he’s no longer working as a hitman and thus doesn’t need to technically worry about it, it’s too ingrained in him to really stop. he has no reason to lie to lana about how he feels about kids, but he does. he goes the extra mile to come up with a reason why he was taking care of orphans so it doesn’t look like he’s the sentimental one, and when lana calls him out on it, he ends the conversation to escape being cornered into revealing himself even more. 

      ★   //    FRUIT HEADCANONS.  /   @unbalancing-act

leif is, for better or worse, the ultimate ‘shirt off my back for you’ kind of guy. he readily puts others before himself, or goes out of his way to help people who look like they could use it, and it’s as natural to him as breathing. if he was for some reason unable to do so, it’d probably make him really uncomfortable. some of this is just inherent to him; he’s a naturally pure-hearted kid with strong empathy for others, and putting himself in someone else’s shoes isn’t a conscious effort for him. he gravitates towards understanding others, reaching compromises, and prioritizing group welfare and harmony over his own happiness. 

some of it, though, likely comes from his background as well. i’ve talked before about his upbringing putting him in an unorthodox position for a future king, and while he still was to a degree spoiled because of his heritage ( finn prioritizing making sure leif was fed, that he was getting what he needed, etc. ), it’s a hard sell to even call it ‘ spoiling ’ in the circumstances they faced at the time. as i’ve mentioned, he’s well aware that he only survived off the altruism of countless other people, many of them strangers, even at risk to themselves, and this stuck with him, inspiring him to pay it forward. 

in many ways, his liberation army efforts also struggled uniquely — morale was low for much, if not all, of the war, and many parts of the public didn’t have much faith in them. ( game mechanics-wise, leif’s army has very little money, and outfitting your units from shops is unreliable, hence fe5′s unique capture mechanic. the liberation army kept its supplies going largely by stealing from imperial forces. ) this means that everyone had to really help each other out, physically and emotionally, in order for their cause to succeed. tl;dr: leif just hasn’t had many occasions where he’s able to be selfish.

while altruism and a willingness to rush to anyone’s aid sounds like a great quality, it’s actually shot leif in the foot more than it’s helped him. his greatest mistake and failure ( getting dorias killed + half his army annihilated + leonster besieged again shortly after reclaiming it ) was caused by his overzealous determination to go to alster’s aid when they were in dire straits, and to make things even with miranda, alster’s princess, whose life was sort of ruined because her parents sheltered leif when he was an infant.

“Come on lets go! They got bashy things in the market place!” Morgan called, grabbing the man’s hand and dragging him along with her. She was in a rush, so the first person who felt like Alm, she grabbed. Certainly he was pretty like Alm, and he.... reeks of Alm... And she had to constant weird feeling she had seen him thousands of years ago like Alm.... So it was obviously Alm.

“Wait a second.” She said, slowing to a stop as she realized, her hand wasn’t really burning. She looked into her hand seeing another, clad in a red/brown glove, looked up the generally toned arm, and took the red custom teacher person uniform. Then she looked at his face and frowned. 

He was not the blue she had gotten accustomed with Alm, HE WAS RED! THE COMPLETELY WRONG COLOR SCHEME! But he was very pretty. She let go of his hand with a start, recoiling as if she had grabbed a porcupine. Though.... she stared intently at the man...

“You’re not Alm but.....” You really do reek of Alm and Celica though, her thoughts completed. Morgan thought for a moment, before recognizing he could have known them from where ever they came from. Valentia? Whatever it was called?

“You’re very red.” Morgan concluded, giving a strong and confident nod.

“You’re from.... Valentia? Or are you Alm in a red wig?” Morgan asked, reaching up as if to try and grab his hair. 

Though she had little personal connection to the Valentians besides the moments spent alongside Celica and her comrades (seeing as how the trio returned to their homeland shortly after the conflict) the respect with which they treated Palla was a bit embarrassing for her. Yet she was not the ungrateful sort, nor dismissive, and it was more in her nature to take everything in stride with a smile.

𝑭𝒓𝒖𝒊𝒕 𝑰𝒏𝒔𝒑𝒊𝒓𝒆𝒅 𝑯𝑪.   ┊   accepting.

🥭    :   how important to my muse is their hometown,  or where they’re from?  are they proud of it,  or considered a hometown hero? did they move away,  or do they wish to?

               Rather than a hometown, Altea being the kingdom of Marth’s birth is naturally a compound of all the values he holds most dear. He loved everything about his motherland that there was to love, it was the root cause of both his deepest anger and his deepest happiness. One of the few times he ever felt plainly furious to the point of burning was when he knew the wicked Dolhrian servant, Morzas, occupied his kingdom and sat on its cold throne as a murderer of the queen and people. 

               Aside from his own fiancee, Altea was most definitely his sweetheart. There existed no one who valued it more. The beautiful land and water, the white limestone castle sitting as an island within its moat, its blue-and-gold banners of Altean regalia.. All the good-hearted citizenry and shining knights they stood for..

               Losing all these treasures to Dolhr and Gra left an unfathomable hole in his heart, losing them a second time to the Archanean empire then reclaiming them anew was enough to bring him to happy tears. Mind you, tears were a sort that he hadn’t even shed at the murder of his royal parents. That’s exactly how much Marth’s kingdom and his people meant to him.

               The liberated citizens returned their prince’s love as well. He was their hero and this idolatry christened him as the timeless ‘Hero-King’ in the first place; a title imbued with such warmth and regard that it would survive amongst the Archaneans for two millennia to the age of Chrom and Lucina.  

Mercedes was a studio art major with a minor in orchestra, and she swore she was living in one of the love stories Bernadetta wrote at this point, because this was getting ridiculous. She had a meet cute with a pretty girl and made friends with her, then happened to find out she’d made best friends with the former heiress of a multi-billion dollar company who was instead studying both criminal law and law enforcement at Purdue. Then they took a dance class together at the local studio and got partnered together and ended up doing a slow waltz to the song Mercedes’s mother had gotten married to 5 years prior. Then they started calling each other cute nicknames, as a friend thing, and Mercedes thought that meant more affectionate greetings were okay, and ended up deeply embarrassing them both when she greeted Edelgard like the French girl she was with two cheek kisses, and then Edelgard kissed her cheeks the next time they saw one another and essentially, Mercedes was going to lose her bisexual mind.

“That’s rough, buddy,” Sylvain offered humorously after a sip of his heavily doctored hot chocolate with added hot chocolate mix, chocolate chips, cookie dough, cinnamon, and whipped cream. Mercedes just groaned, shoving her head into her pillow.

“I’m a mess, Sylvie! I composed a song for her! On violin- with a separate vocal track!” Sylvain wolf-whistled, and she just whined pathetically, turning so she could hide her face in her hands instead.

“I’d offer my excellent advice, except I also know Edelgard would find me and kill me if I gave it to you and you acted on it, so I’m just gonna keep my big mouth shut. But again, that’s rough, buddy.” She just groaned in reply again, and Sylvain chuckled. She pouted as she moved her hands off her face, crossing her arms.

“So, how’re things going with sword boy then, Sylvie?”