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What will happen? WHO KNOWS!!!

Basically, the problem with Edelgard, as well as her fans like Raxistaicho, is that they don't believe "people who disagree with us are wrong".

They instead believe "everyone Secretly Already Agrees with Us, but some psychological dysfunction is preventing them from seeing things properly."

So, Edelgard believes that "everyone Secretly Knows my way of running Fodlan is better, but they're just too brainwashed by the Church to see things properly."

And her fans, like Raxis, believe that "everyone Secretly Knows that Edelgard is really a good person, they're just too misogynistic and/or brainwashed by patriarchy to see things properly. Nobody could ever really criticize a woman's behavior, or side with a man like Dimitri instead, without being a secret misogynist (and therefore psychologically defective, so we don't have to actually engage with their arguments)."

So, the reason Edelgard appeals to so many people is that both she and her fans have no "theory of mind", no capacity to "imagine thought processes, emotional states, life experiences, or even entire moral value systems that are Significantly Different From Themselves."

You know I don’t think that’s completely inaccurate, anon, considering they’re 100% convinced that Nilsh is some kind of evil cult leader who brainwashed me and others here into hating Edelgard. Even though. You know. Most of our blogs existed first and Nilsh was just repeating a lot of things we’d been saying for months beforehand.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say they have no concept that we have our own thoughts and feelings. I think they know and it’s a combination of upset (“but I’m right!!! How can they not see how right I am!!!”) and cognitive dissonance (“But wait if a queer woman doesn’t like Edelgard then was I wrong??? No, certainly she must be lying or brainwashed or confused!”)

And like. When you’ve made your entire fandom presence about being this socially-conscious person who calls out the bigotry in people hating your fave and sticking it to the haterz, then you have a lot of investment in proving that you’ve been justified in your past harassment. Cuz if you harassed people for being bigots and you were wrong about them being bigots, well, now you just look like a jackass. Doubly so if they’re actually part of the group you claimed they were being bigoted against in the first place.

teaveetamer

My post has more interactions than yoooooooours ;)

ezralahm

Acknowledge me Senpai! Debate me!! Debate meeee!

ezralahm

Ohh, also, even though I realize at this point converting this guy into comedy material is as difficult as finding Iceberg Lore videos on YouTube...

Gee golly gosh, I wonder why in your experience, people take everything you say or do in bad faith when you have a recorded habit of: 1) Block evasion by any means necessary 2) Followed by lying about how you Totally Blocked Somebody and wanted nothing to do with them 3) When you are still taking screenshots and name-dropping them to your followers 4) Who conveniently seem to stop by said users to harangue them anonymously 5) And only after said harassment gets traced back to you do you declare "I don't condone harassment!! Anyone who would go bother these people is no friend of mine!!! BTW let's talk about this STUPID AWFUL TAKE BY THIS PERSON" 6) Followed by you bragging to your Discord buds that you kicked their ass and this is totally like a Marvel superhero it's so cool that you gave them a well-deserved bitchslap 7) And just to secure the victory, you go along to TVTropes / Wiki / old posts to make sure the "right" information is given so they know they are totally wrong 8) And if anyone dares give you pushback, you immediately dig your heels in and declare that it never happened, and even if it did, you were at work, and even if you weren't, your targets deserved it because they got information wrong on a fictional event

Clearly, the problem is the haters. It cannot possibly be your own individual behavior that makes people take you in bad faith.

How dare those detractors not take you in good faith when you are such an upstanding fandom citizen smh smh smh

butwhatifidothis

Edelstans: We love Edelgard because of her moral grayness! The people who like her "as a villain" just hate nuance and deliberately misread her character to make her simple and evil!

Edelstans:

butwhatifidothis

And in case you were wondering, no, this is not the usual "anything to make Edelgard look good huh" shtick.

This person - a moderator on the Edelgang server - unironically believes that the Nabateans should have been wiped off the map, by any means necessary. The Nabateans, as a race, should not be allowed any sort of power over humans, they as a race should be destroyed, and they as a race deserve no sympathy. They're just an "invasive species" that do not belong in Fodlan.

And, hey, if there's anyone from the Edelgang who wants to throw a fit because I'm blasting off the horrific rhetoric y'all allow to fester in your shitty server "out of context," I would be more than happy to give the full context of one of this mod's lovely conversations about how they - and others! - feel about the Nabateans. I promise you, your context does not make you look better

teaveetamer

Them: They took us out of context!

The context BWIIDT didn't include: people in the server at the time calling it out for being uncomfortable, gross, and reminiscent of Nazi propaganda.

I censored the names with different colors. Here I have three members of the server calling it out at the time. There's at least two other people who called this out in this conversation but I didn't include them because I didn't feel like digging up those screenshots.

And you wanna know the kicker? Yeah this guy doesn't give a fuck. You know how I know this guy doesn't give a fuck? Because I talked to him about it directly months ago and here's what he said:

(Different display name because he's using a nickname in the Edelgard server, but I just took these and the pfp is the same obviously)

"Had someone mentioned that to me in the server I would have addressed it immediately" at least FIVE SEPARATE PEOPLE mentioned it in the server and your reaction was to threaten to fucking ban them!

So I'll just follow up with what I actually said directly to him about this shit [Context: this comes shortly after HE LITERALLY SAID TO MY FACE that Nabateans are alien invaders who deserve to be genocided]

Me: "Hey even if you're ignorant that what you were saying is Nazi shit I am trying to educate you as someone who's family has experienced this trauma so you can be better informed and more careful in your language so you don't accidentally perpetuate harmful things in your community" Response:"ThE fAsCiSt EdeLcRiTs ArE tRyiNg tO siLeNcE MEEEEEEEE". I'm not kidding. He literally called me a fucking fascist in his """"victory"""" lap announcement to the Edelgard discord server. After he told me I deserved to be harassed and I could go fuck myself. Like. Yikes.

And now here's the thing that gets me. Of course rn they're probably screaming about how the evil Edelcrit mooners are so mean, obsessed, discourse brain-rotted, etc. They don't seem to comprehend that people other than them can be affected by racism and xenophobia and sexism and queerphobia and want to call it out. They think we bring this stuff up because we're just obsessed with discourse and we want to "score points" on them. To them, whenever they bring up Social Issues(TM) it's because they caaaaaare but when we do it we're just identity politicking harpies who hate a PNG and them and want to destroy them.

If my end goal here was to "win" some kind of stupid discourse competition then trust me, I would have dumped every screenshot and recording I have into a google drive link and spammed it every second I could. I don't do that because, guess what, not everyone sees this as some kind of stupid sports game they can "win". My only goal is to get you to leave people the fuck alone already when they block you and tell you not to interact with them anymore. I want nothing to do with you guys and I am only forced to engage with you because you will not leave me the fuck alone.

I wasn't really planning on posting these screenshots. I have a post in my drafts where I explicitly tell an anon who asked that I wasn't going to. I'd really rather move on from all of this shit. But like, you know I've also had an anon trying very hard to sexually harass me for the last few days, and Raxy-poo whining about me because I had the audacity to tell him to stop block evading and reposting screenshots of my fucking blog onto his twitter. So yeah I'm kind of done at this point. I think all of us are. So anon, here you go, a sample of the shit they need to clean out of their house. I'm genuinely sick to my stomach knowing that this kind of thing goes unchallenged in a server for a series I love, and I'm disgusted that some people seem to think I would treat the rhetoric that led to the genocide of my family like a fucking game.

9thwither

It's genuinely fair to never let them live this down, cos some are still spouting all of this.

lumeha

One thing that grinds my gears a little regarding Rhea and the FE3H lore is that people assume that she's the only one who has built Fodlan's society the way it is post War of Heroes

As if humans had no agency at all and just blindly followed her every words

As if humanity hasn't shown that it is willing to do a lot for power, again and again, and turning against itself if needs be for it, and against others too

As if everything falls on her shoulders

(as if the Agarthans aren't also running interferences but also why the fuck did the dlc make Pan an Agarthan that part is still baffling to me what was the PLAN here)

randomnameless

What is even more "funny" is how, in the Nopes timeline, Rhea's human ally, "Great Emperor" Wilhelm abandonned Adrestia and "retreated in the background" when his son and heir "died at a young age" due to, per FE16, a "sudden illness".

So we have

91 : Nemesis dies - Adrestia rules over Fodlan, Wilhelm gives his throne to his son, but still assists him in battle - we know some Elites escaped, maybe Seiros was hunting them even if she had already recovered Sothis, by this point.

98 : Wilhelm's son, Lycaon, dies, Wilhelm ditches Adrestia - the War of Heroes ends (even if Rhea didn't kill all Elites, given how Maurice is still around!).

100 : An Aegir, Derrick, challenges the Empress of that time (most likely Lycaon's successor) to gain control of Adrestia, but loses the duel.

185 : Garreg Mach's monastery is completed - iirc a NPC in Nopes mentions how it took around 100 years to be built ?

---

Adrestia's own history shows how, without Rhea's input or anything else, the nobility - the Emperor, being the most important noble of them all encompassed - that was supposed to be something measured by knowledge and want to help/guide/protect the people was swapped by "winning a duel".

In 2 years, we came from an Adrestia that opposed and fought Nemesis, to an Adrestia that borrowed his "the strong must rule that's the natural order" motto - if betting the Imperial Throne, aka Adrestia's leadership on a duel, is any indication.

Now, we don't know what happened between 98 and 100, if Rhea told humans to kill each other for funsies or to pick the strongest human to rule over other humans, but we know her "favored" human was still around and bailed out from that nonsense (not even taking back the throne when his son died!) and they returned Seteth's the Ochain Shield to Indech's hamlet at one point, so it might very well mean that neither Rhea nor Wilhelm were around when Derrick von Aegir challenged Lycaon's successor for the throne, nor when that successor agreed to that duel.

Tl;Dr : Nopes gives us enough clues to understand that in this timeline at least, Adrestia became the hellhole we know without any Nabatean/Agarthan influence, but just through humans being, well, humans.

(unless we're supposing that young Lycaon's "sudden illness" was a lie Rhea made up to cover Agarthan assassination - even if I prefer the "he was killed by his peers who wanted his throne" theory).

dimiclaudeblaigan

This whole thing bugs me as well considering they CLAIM the game had inspiration form FE4. Like... where? The bloodlines and the mole people and that's it? Bloodlines are in other FE games but not in terms of special abilities for the most part, so that's where the inspiration feels strongest, but even then, that's part of the problem with this game.

The reason Naga stopped getting involved with humans was because they got power from dragon blood but used that power to wage war on each other again and again. While I'd argue her lack of interference was forced and imposed upon all dragons (i.e. she tried to control them all and basically didn't allow, by law iirc, that dragons were no longer allowed to interact with humans, which plenty dragons said fuck you to), Rhea... didn't do this. She didn't force others of her tribe to stop interacting with humans and continued to herself, but Naga's way of doing things wasn't a choice. When Seteth chose to stop interacting with humans for as long as he did, it was a choice that Rhea left him alone to make.

Then when it comes to humans waging war on each other again and again, Rhea didn't just abandon the good humans who weren't doing anything wrong. She didn't see a few bad apples and go "wow all of humanity sucks, I'm going to leave them for dead, one and all". Some people who have followed me long enough know I have a Big Fat Grudge against Naga and hate her pre-Marth time (i.e. Jugdral's time), and it's because she ultimately decided all humans weren't worth saving because some sucked.

Rhea on the other hand fears extinction of her kind, rightfully so, and yet still can't find it in her to abandon humans. She helps with taking down bad humans (I'm sorry buddy (not really though lol) but if you think someone looting a church isn't bad, you are bad). She only gets involved, however, when the issue is either directed at the Church she lives in (i.e. her people are put in any kind of danger), or her help is directly requested (ex. the Kingdom needing help, or even Edelgard in SB asking for her assistance to deal with Thales).

The game writes Rhea out to be this horrendous person who is a "world" controlling tyrant (because ah yes, she's forcing Morfis to do her bidding. Were you not aware?! Poor Brigid has her will imposed upon them at all times! Sreng is forced to comply with the Church!!! Sure can't believe Rhea has such an influence on the whole world, huh Edelgard?). They let the narrative write her off as having a hand in all the politics, even though like... the Alliance doesn't even really know her. Or care to. She doesn't interfere with them and they don't interfere with her. She went to visit Goneril once that we know of, probably saw that they were taking in child slaves, was disgusted, took the one she saw, and noped right out of there and never wanted to come back.

Then with Faerghus' politics, even though she's got the best relationship with Faerghus, she's not even involved in those politics. If she was, guess what? Dimitri would've been crowned king at her request. He could have gone to her and they could've both said well fuck the idea that you have to be of legal age to take the throne. Yes, I believe she cares for Faerghus' people enough that she's willing to help if asked, but Faerghus deals with its own politics. Rhea doesn't assist unless asked. Have they asked her for help with Sreng? Nope. Did Lambert ask for her help in his plans with Duscur and Sreng? Nope.

And of course, if you say the people of Faerghus were suffering because of Rufus' lack of proper reign and Rhea didn't help, she's demonized for that... but if she did help, she'd be accused of trying to control Faerghus, so either way, she can't win... and the narrative does do this to her and the fandom already hated her for being of a church, so it just took over the majority's perception of her. She's damned if she does or doesn't and her very existence is basically a crime to the fandom and the narrative both.

Adrestia has a slew of political issues, and Rhea had no hand in it. Yeah, the whole Crests thing is a problem in Adrestia (and only Adrestia, don't even get me started on that topic), but Rhea doesn't control what the power structure is like there (or anywhere). If they fight over that shit, it's not because she did anything to make them. She leaves them to deal with their own political strife unless asked for help (again, SB), just like she does with the other Fodlan lands.

We know Crests aren't even her fault so I'm not gonna even bother getting into that.

The sad part is that the narrative paints Rhea as being at fault for the Agarthans slaughtering her brethren and using their blood and bones for power. It then uses her trauma to label her a monster. All Rhea has ever done with humanity is help them if they asked her for help, and what did her help entail? The help of, wouldn't you know it, other humans. People like Catherine and Gilbert were her go-to people for support when asked for it. She would send her personal knights, humans, to help other humans.

Humanity (including Thales and co) are shown to do horrific things, but Rhea is blamed for everything? All the woes of Fodlan? Rhea is at fault for Metodey being a scumbag? For Erwin getting Claude's uncle killed? For Gregoire using his daughter to be a trophy wife while evidently being such a terrible person to her that she's terrified of him? For Rufus refusing to even actually rule and letting Faerghus nearly fall to ruin, leaving the capital in a terrible state? And if you count Hopes' background information, he tried to have Dimitri assassinated multiple times, and it wasn't so subtle that it went unnoticed. But well, I guess that's Rhea's fault too.

Anyway, point being, humans do human things and Rhea magically gets blamed for it. Yet, the game they took inspiration from had humans doing the exact same bullshit, fighting each other and trying to decide who should have this that and the other in regard to power, and it was... a dragon who helped the good humans get through it and survive. Who had to help them because the other humans got so out of control and barbaric on their own, with dragons not involved in their lives at all.

He helps them, doesn't tell them his identity, is only found out by the main character, and takes his leave at the end of the game. He helped them and left them to it and is portrayed in the game in a positive light overall for having helped the good people survive against the humans who were warring against them.

Again, that is the game Houses took inspiration from. Hence why, again, I can only see the bloodline thing being their sole inspiration overall, because the way they wrote Rhea would make me think they looked at FE4 and went "hmmm humans bad in both games... but how about in this game, we blame everything humanity does literally ever on the dragon!", even though like... humans would war with or without dragon power. If... you know... our own reality is... any... indicator...

renisfan

See that's another reason why I think CF won't work out. Humans never realize their own problems because everything got blamed on "inhuman beasts" and are "fixed" by killing them. With no reflection there will be no improvement. They'd just repeat the same mistakes and again search for someone else to blame them on, and continue to make the same mistakes.

Like an endless witch hunt.

ezralahm

You could say...

It's the continual cycle of the Strong trampling upon the Weak...

mad-not-disappointed

i don’t really care much for zutara but you know a ship i think should have been canon?

THEM.

it’s CRIMINAL that these two had so much chemistry and yet Layla ended up with white bread Will.

9thwither

If anything, they're what Zutaras think their ship is. Hell, Will is closer to what the ongoing toxic Zutara stans think Aang is 💀

gascon-en-exil

"I reiterate that this sounds like sour grapes from not liking that people praise Dimitri’s arc in AM while the other major characters all get scraps by comparison [...]" Really feels you hit the nail on the head with this one. Its an odd complaint that Dimitri gets a full character arc while letting the rest of the plot take the backstage in AM when CF has the exact same problems with the plot except here Edelgard doesn't get any character development whatsoever.

Yes, it's similar to how in another reblog chain (or even that one?) the response to CF being shorter than the other routes was to claim that most of the non-CF chapters are filler...when almost none of them really are, as I pointed out. All of them advance the plot or central conflict in some way, bar SS's endgame which is frequently decried for being weird and random. It's possible to criticize the developers for short-changing Edelgard (and Claude and Rhea) in various ways while not tearing down the one lead who came the closest to having two complete, coherent arcs across both games.

And while that post is so old that it predates Hopes's full release, that game only doubles down on all of those missteps. Claude is still a side piece to someone else's story, Rhea is still a plot device who's kept offscreen except on the rare occasions that the story needs her for something, and the developers cared more about keeping Edelgard marketable than they cared about exploring her motivations or respecting her agency or giving her a decisive victory not tied to whether or not Byleth is with her.

gascon-en-exil

I learned about the khalidstans from your previous posts but since an anon mentioned it, I wanted to ask. Why would they dislike that Claude allies or feels sympathy for Rhea? It seems like, from what I understand, they only think about Claude in terms of race. But then shouldn't they like Rhea, a persecuted minority who Edelgard hates solely because Rhea is a dragon (aka a good symbolic example of racism in Fodlan)? Shouldn't Claude and Rhea understand each other more, and why would this be bad

I don't know if they originated it, but the Khalidstans certainly popularized the take that the Nabatean genocide isn't a "real" genocide because the victims are light-skinned. They take it a step further as well, claiming that IS is racist for (among many other things) centering the suffering of a "white" fantasy race over that of the various darker-skinned characters.

So no, to them Claude sympathizing with Rhea is just another instance of IS's racist writing - as is Dedue devoting himself to Dimitri, Cyril being happy with Rhea, or Petra working with anyone other than Claude.

gascon-en-exil

“We have seen Rhea send people after the head of one of the other churches in the main game too”

Yeah, an army. Sneaky stuff in the shadows isn’t really how Rhea operates outside of the Sothis Project. The sneakiest thing the CoS did in the main game the execution of Christophe under false charges, and even that was something where 1) there was a direct threat against the Church and Rhea involved, and 2) it was an execution, not an assassination.

Hubert did not laugh that evilly to have his actions ignored.

How could anyone forget that the Ashe/Catherine paralogue is an escort mission - in fog of war (which always favors the enemy in FE, lest there be any confusion)? That is not how you do a covert strike.

gascon-en-exil

Jeritza's popularity is so weird to me because my impression of Mercedes is that she essentially plays to the same fetish that the wildly unpopular Camilla was meant to be; the overbearing, doting older sister character (with big tits!) but that she's mildly more well-adjusted than Camilla was. Her supports with both Felix and Cyril both play up these elements as well, and that she has a paired ending with her brother has all these incestuous implications that should turn people off from them.

I'd never thought about the parallels between Camillla and Mercedes, but you're right. Funny that fandom at large seems to have no issue with playing up Mercedes's curviness and maternal qualities. It's not creepy if it's not directed at the Avatar? (Funny too that I don't think I've ever seen anyone actively shipping Mercieleth, M/F or F/F.)

Jeritza seems to attract a few specific types of fans:

Edelstans who want to scrub him of his villainous qualities because they make Edelgard look bad by association. Hubert is subjected to similar treatment.

Antis who believe that Bylitza is the only non-problematic Byleth ship because it can be gay, Jeritza is not one of Byleth's students, and it can't be described as incest (Rhea) or selfcest (Sothis). They can excuse an hybristophilic attraction to a mentally unwell serial killer, but they draw the line at that other stuff!

More tongue-in-cheek fans who support the Lamine incest based on those implications you mentioned, and because it's the only instance of an actually incestuous pairing among the playable cast of this game.

I have considerable difficulty imagining that anyone sincerely likes Jeritza outside of an ulterior motive like one of those. His characterization is extremely sloppy, his value as a unit is limited by his awful availability, his (English) voice acting is easily the worst of the playable cast, and he's neither a realistic nor a flattering depiction of any sort of mental illness. All my usual gripes about Byleth's same-sex S ranks apply to him too, and in addition it's not entirely clear from their supports that Jeritza is even capable of distinguishing between sex and murder. Again, not remotely flattering...and it's still too tame to pass as legitimate blood play or a rape fantasy or another violent kink.

Hubert really is everything Jeritza is except better in every way...including better at being worse, naturally.

kamekaswoosh

Look I just don't think Koei Tecmo is the best to depict a queer revolution against a religious theocracy.

izzythebananaqueen

remember when they did a Nobunaga’s Ambition crossover with Pokemon where the plot was “the only way to stop the BAD imperialism of the region is to do our GOOD imperialism of the region first, but wait it turns out that the BAD imperialism wasn’t actually bad at all because the apparent bad guy was just trying to remind everyone that Pokemon aren’t supposed to just be tools for fighting, despite them being the main source of firepower for the armies in this region, and also God is okay with all of this”

9thwither

.......I completely forgot.

Genuinely never let them touch Fire Emblem or Pokémon ever again.

izzythebananaqueen

Okay but Conquest is still good though, me pointing out how the story was silly was my way of agreeing with OP how “progressiveness” isn’t really KT’s strong suit story-wise.

Ironically though, KT actually has made a Pokemon game recently, the best one in a long time in fact: Pokopia. Extremely good game. Which, ironically, is pretty progressive for a KT game? It has a pro-environmental message, all Pokemon use they/them (WOKE ALERT?? /lh), and despite the bleak setting it’s all about finding hope and restoring the world. Very wholesome. I don’t particularly know if KT was actually behind the story or not, though.

KT can cook gameplay-wise, it’s just their writing choices are “????” at times.

9thwither

Gotcha.

Just can't shake off how badly they handled the Fodlanverse in two games, in terms of writing, as well with how they wrote the two most prominent female characters (and the world's underexplored survivor dragon race in current Fire Emblem history).

Maybe a lot of this links back to them not working well with anti-war / violence stories involving imperialism and conquest, etc.

pandp-author

Rhea killed Sitri, y'all.

real take, BTW. Not making this up.

fantasyinvader

Oh, that's nothing. I remember a take that Sothis and Nemesis were lovers, Rhea found out and ended up killing Sothis in a fit of jealous rage. Or early on, how Seiros possess Rhea at the end of Flower.

9thwither