Fire Emblem Fanfic Recommendations

A submission-based fanfiction-recommendation blog for the Fire Emblem series.

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Author: Kitten Kisses

Rating: T

Pairing: Hector/Farina; Lilina, Florina

Word Count: 4,084

Content Warnings: n/a

Summary: FE6/FE7. AU. After the death of Hector's wife, Farina, Florina steps in as a mother figure for her niece, Lilina.

Reasons to Read: All the characters are integrated into the universe in a way that makes sense, and probably everyone could use a little glasses-wearing-Hector in their life. More importantly, the story itself is the right amount of bittersweet, and the relationships maturely and realistically depicted.

Excerpt: "But Hector, she doesn't even remember what Farina looked like." Never before had Florina known how badly a past-tense word could hurt.

Maybe that was why Hector had put all of Farina's things away, shoving them into boxes and tossing them into a storage unit; he paid money to hide away her things. Was the constant reminder of Farina in past tense too much for him? Too painful?

He ran a hand through his hair and gave a frustrated shrug. "I told her," he said. "I told Lilina that she looks like her mother."

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Hi guys. 

I know the blog's been pre-tty dead since, like, August, which we owe to general disorganization on the administration's part. (There's just one admin but pretend I'm a shadowy cabal of fanfic nerds anyway). 

But Rihanna told me to pick myself up, dust myself off, and get back in the saddle, so we've clambered back on the wagon. The video game fanfic wagon. There's a few recs queued up for today, so look out for those. Feel free to submit, too, unless it's Awakening tactician self-inserts, in which case submissions are mandatory.

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Author: Shimizu Hitomi

Rating: T

Pairing: Camus/Nina/Hardin; Zeke/Teeta

Word Count: 10,350

Content Warnings: rape/noncon, graphic violence 

Summary: FE2,3. Part 1 of 2. Only after you have loved can you know how little hate truly amounts to.

Reasons to Read: Caught somewhere between a coming of age and the reworking of a myth, Through a Glass Darkly recounts Nyna's flight from the palace and Camus's fall at Grust, with the intention of eventually telling their tale in full.

Excerpt: From his pack he drew out a small, shieldlike device. She froze, recognizing what it was.

"Take this," he said.

She did. Her fingers closed around the cold steel of the Fire Emblem, the royal insignia of her line. She turned and closed her eyes. "I will never forgive you."

He took hold of her shoulders, leaned down and kissed her brow. Her tears escaped at last, trickling down her face, unbidden.

"Live," he said. "Live, for as long as you possibly can!"

o-o-o

What she did not tell him: Then you, too, must live. Live, live, live -

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Author: TwinMoons

Rating: G

Pairing: N/A; Finn

Word Count: 1,452

Content Warnings: N/A

Summary: Ever wonder why Finn and his son (whoever that may be) never had a talk event? Here's one of the possibilities.

Reasons to Read: This story follows some implications of Jugdral's orphaned generation. Without any excess of drama or sentimentality, a son comes to terms with his father.

Excerpt: He was there, alive, all this time, a breath away at Lenster. And never  once, it seemed, did the thought of me ever cross his mind. It was no  secret that most of the children from Lord Sigurd's ill-fated army were  hiding in Isaac. I still remembered the Emperor's troops making periodic  sweeps, trying to find us. Even if I understood that Lenster's current  situation made travel risky and he had a burden to raise Prince Leaf,  would it have been that much trouble to send a word?

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Author: Mark of the Asphodel

Rating: G

Pairing: N/A; Beck, Linde

Word Count: 4,038

Content Warnings: N/A

Summary: The War of Darkness has changed the political landscape of Archanea, but the nature of war itself is changing as well. Beck the ballistician finds his contributions not entirely welcome in the League. One-shot, FE11.

Reasons to Read: In painting the world of Archanea, mechanics and all, this story captures a fine balance between gritty realism and playful absurdity from the believable voice of a common man who just wants to do his job.

Excerpt: Beck reckoned no army like this had ever marched in all the years of  Archanea's glory. He also reckoned they'd fall to pieces in a heartbeat  if the high commander went down. Without Prince Marth, this war was  over, Nyna or no Nyna. And if they actually managed to accomplish all  the impossible things they'd set out to do, destroying the Dark Pontifex  and slaying a Dragon King and all the rest of it... well, the League  would fall to pieces in about two heartbeats, and Beck could go back to comfortably despising the Archaneans.

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Author: Queen Lua

Rating: T

Pairing: N/A; Leonardo, Volug, Edward

Word Count: 9,536

Content Warnings: N/A

Summary: Leonardo pursed his lips, eying Volug carefully. The dog was staring at him, with glittering eyes that seemed just a touch too strange, a touch too intelligent to belong to some ordinary dog.

Reasons to Read: Leonardo’s experiences in a Daein military academy and his subsequent suspicion and prejudice fit seamlessly into the sparse details that canon provided about his situation. His growth and struggles to come to terms with the presence of a “sub-human” ally is realistic, satisfying, and surprisingly sweet.

Excerpt: After a while Volug had given up snarling and growling his protests at Edward, and instead treated the swordsman like he might a particularly persistent fly—indifference, punctuated by brief bouts of annoyance and an occasional tail-swat. Which, of course, only encouraged Edward, making him spend even more time with Volug—like right now, Leonardo noted with a scowl.

"Edward," Leonardo called, "you know he doesn't like being petted."

"Maybe he just doesn't like it when you pet him," came the immediate reply. "He likes me just fine."

Leonardo resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Edward raked his fingers through the dog's fur again—through a particularly knotty clump, and Leonardo saw Volug flinch and flash his teeth. "See? You're bothering him right now!"

"What are you talking about? He's fine. Aren't you, boy?" Another harsh stroke through the knotted fur, and another flinch from Volug.

Leonardo made an irritated sound in the back of his throat. "I just don't think you should hang around him so much."

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Author: Measured

Rating: G

Pairing: Ike & Soren

Word Count: 754

Content Warnings: Post-FE12; Post-Apocalyptic “Ashera won” AU

Summary: The seas swallow Tellius until there are only wastelands and rocky mountains to cross.

Reasons to Read: This story is as desolate as Soren’s death quote would warrant, painting a picture of bleak resignation that nonetheless underscores some of Soren’s most admirable traits: his selfless devotion, and his grim tenacity.

Excerpt: Ash falls from the sky daily, now. The goddess has chastised her children and stolen away the sun. Food is scarce, soon it will be nonexistent. Soon they will die and the last of her creations will be the dust they began as. Despite obvious proof otherwise, Soren considers becoming an atheist. The woman he'd seen in that tall tower was not a god but a madwoman. It would be like deifying Ashnard.

Ike has been dazed since then. He has brief fits of lucidity and he has taken the news that everyone else has probably died as well as it could be taken.

(Soren thinks Mist may have lived, perhaps Boyd did steal her from the explosion, they had been far off. Still, even if Tellius falls, he was only saving one person. The rest of the world be damned.)

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Author: Intaglionyx

Rating: G

Pairing: N/A; Hector, Uther, Eliwood, Lilina

Word Count: 3,867

Content Warnings: Post-FE6

Summary: "The roads men walk in their grief are more often than not long and winding ones—almost as long and winding as this letter will no doubt prove to be, by the time the sun has set and my candles have run short." Eliwood writes a letter to Lilina.

Reasons to Read: Eliwood’s reminiscing of the Ostian court—and its past rulers preceding Lilina—is convincing and intimately familiar; Eliwood’s relationships with both Hector and his daughter are believable and excellently-handled.

Excerpt: Your grandmother was a strong woman as well as a strong marquess, but the same illness that took Hector's father before I knew his family took her as well, in the last month of our thirteenth summer.

In retrospect, things happened quickly after that. Ostia's steward had retired shortly after I arrived for my fostering, and your grandmother had taken on his duties herself, so Uther had to take the marquess's circlet from his mother's corpse and plant it on his own head, from what your father told me afterward. Hector was so angry…and for half a week after that, I barely saw him, and nor did anyone else in the castle. He rose late from bed, he disappeared when it was time for lessons, and if he ate at all, it was in the kitchens at night, for we never saw him at high table.

Those were strange days. Your father's brother had never been the friendliest of men, but he became like a statue once that circlet touched his brow, for all that he had never been open of speech before. He must have spoken in his council chamber, but it was not as though some boy of thirteen years was invited to those dealings. His uncle barely left his library; when I saw him, he looked half-starved. At dinners, you barely heard a spoon or knife touching bowl or plate; everyone was too busy staring past their dishes to eat them. Barely a word was exchanged…your grandmother was well-loved, and the loss of her did something to the castle. As for me…Hector barely had a word for me, Uther wouldn't spare a word at all, and I began to wonder whether perhaps my time at Ostia was meant to end soon.

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Author: Pureauthor

Rating: T

Pairing: Franz/Amelia

Word Count: 1,872

Content Warnings: WWI AU; graphic violence

Summary: I once knew a boy named Franz…

Reasons to Read: Written in the barefaced, brutal style of a WWI narrative, this story conveys the horrific reality of warfare in a way works of ostensibly similar subjects have failed to. Honest and impactful, but never tasteless.  

Excerpt: Once, on a march, with all of us bent double like beggars three times our age, shells began landing all around us, throwing up huge clods of earth and blasting us in any every direction. We panicked, and we've had run around like fools trying to avoid the blasts had not Ephraim found a path that led us half-underground, away from the worst of the blasts. I took a shrapnel wound to the leg, but lived to fight another day.

Then, one week before the armistice, we were in the thick of a fight with the opposing side. I was doing my best to make it out alive when I stepped his face by accident. Not that I supposed he would have worried about that – the bottom half of his body had been blown clean off. He had almost made it.

I glance up at the village. Everything seems so unfamiliar. The colours, the homes, the women going about their daily tasks… the ordinariness of it all causes tears to prickle at the back of my eyes.

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Author: Yugi the Skanky Hobag 

Rating: G

Pairing: Eirika/Saleh

Word Count: 695

Content Warnings: N/A

Summary: Valega: I can love you, and you can love me, but it's another thing for you and I to love them, which is exactly what we must do.

Reasons to Read:  A perceptive take on an otherwise neglected pairing, providing insight into both the characters of Eirika and Saleh by examining their separate interpretations of Valega.

Excerpt: She looked somewhat troubled. "But when I tried it, I had difficulty practicing alone. I couldn't see how a person could contemplate human kind among flowers and trees and rivers."

The wise Master Saleh felt uncomfortable. That's always how he always did it.

"You are supposed to reflect on the world around you, and from knowing the immensity of life and creation, you balance your wishes with a better future. I find it hard to grasp the human heart when I'm not around people." She studied her hands, trying so desperately to cradle that world in those wounded fingertips. She could pray for peace when her brother was near, because she knew of the roughness in his heart; she could pray for strength in an individual when Seth was by her side, because he was so thoughtlessly unselfish; and she could pray for forgiveness around Tana, because her proud brother was a frustration.

In order to understand humankind, one must understand the human.

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Author: Myaru 

Rating: G

Pairing: Lucius/Raven; Chad, Lugh, Ray

Word Count: 6,341

Content Warnings: N/A

Summary: Lucius cuts his hair for the good of the orphanage children, and sets foot on a path leading to even greater sacrifice on the eve of Bern's war. Set after FE7, closer to FE6.

Reasons to Read: “A gorgeously atmospheric, refreshingly mature take on Lucius’s character, particularly his often overlooked firmness and devotion as a guardian, as well as his wavering doubts. Offers a rare, warming glimpse into his life at peacetime with the Araphen orphans.”

Excerpt: He couldn't stop touching his hair - pushing it behind his ears, running his fingers through it to the nape of his neck, where the ends made him itch. It was in the way more often now, Ray helpfully noted while they were bent over a wooden tub to do laundry; the wind swept it into his eyes, made it tickle his nose. Lucius scrubbed a mud stain, handfuls of blanket between his hands, rubbing, rubbing. The fibers bled red dye into the water. It never seemed to run out; a hundred washes after it had been donated, it still bled, clouding in the water like tea and ruining his robe with a dark pink tint around the cuffs. He had to pick it from beneath his nails - red dirt, like mud made of blood and clay. I hate red, he thought, worrying his lower lip in his teeth. I hate it.

Elimine did not teach hatred. Lucius was inured to blood. Where did that come from?

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Hello all!

Before we get down to the recommendation-ing, a post of introduction is probably in order! 

My hope here essentially is to amass a nice, varied collection of 'fic across the various continents/universes/generations/etc in a nice, consistent, informative list. It might especially be helpful for digging up and exposing the old gems that have missed out on the benefits of tag-based searching but are no less worth reading 8 or 9 years later! But mostly to share and recognize awesome fanfic, because honestly, it doesn't get nearly enough of that. 

The recs will be formatted as follows:

Title: 

Author: Or author(s) of the work. 

Rating: G, T, M, or E (an approximation would be made if the author does not provide one)

Pairing: Genfic included; also, principle characters.

Word Count: 

Content Warnings: Kinks, triggers, pertinent tags, etc. 

Summary:

Reasons to Read: A note from a submitter/reader about why they would recommend the fic! 

Excerpt: A brief sample of the story's writing. 

Feel free to take a look at the few recs lined up to kick this party off (and make this page less painfully barren), and I hope to see some of your submissions soon!