rorah-cosa

@Rorah's side blog for trash post (changing every previous nickname for current nickname is hard and time consuming).

[tinnictheguardian]

I love how Dimitri's superhuman strength is a huge feature of Three Hopes background lore!

Also, it seems Rufus's fear of his nephew might purely be based on his superhuman strength. Like we don't hear of any other crest bearers who have a constant passive like we do with Dimitri. Most likely, Rufus is also exceptionally strong, despite no crest. But then Dimitri is on another level.

I think if you are average and see someone super strong, you don't necessarily feel the impact because they, like many other people, just go into the "stronger than me" category. But if you are strong yourself, and you meet someone beyond strong. Maybe even a child who can break you without thinking, you can become afraid.

I also don't remember seeing any other instances of crests making someone passively different. Like, yes, Jeralt lived a long time and it's implied Yuri and Byleth will have long lives if they are not killed in combat. But outside of that, I think it's only Dimitri who was born with passive super strength because of his crest.

Of course, the only other instance is Hapi, but her crest's power was warped due to experimentation. Poor, poor Dimitri!

[wumbo--cumbo]

"Three Houses isn't about Byleth, it's about the House Leaders"

It's about Byleth and the House Leaders.... and if you asked IS/KT who the protagonist was, they'd say Byleth every time. Look on the Fire Emblem World website and look at how each game has its main protagonist on the front, for example. Guess who's there for 3H? Edelgard? Dimitri? Claude? All of them? No, it's Byleth.

[fantasyinvader]

Emblem Byleth exists moutherfuckers

[flangst]

@fantasyinvader I believe made a post questioning whether Shez is evil or not (and it depends on whether they give into their desire to kill Byleth or not) but I noticed something else about Shez: they almost seem less immoral so much as amoral. Looking over the dialogue from 3hopes I noticed they bring up more than once about they don't much care or understand about what "justice" means, which is kind of disturbing. They don't want to grow beyond being a mercenary, which is why they can't truly lead the house leaders to be their best selves. Their idea of justice is largely based on which route they're in, though ironically Arval seems to have a much firmer idea of their own morals.

Arval is often the one bringing up whether Shez's actions are "right" or "Wrong." Of course, Arval's morals ultimately revolve around the idea that wiping out the Nabateans is just, but they still do have a moral code, albeit a twisted one. Shez doesn't seem to prioritize morality as a guide for what they need to do in their life. They'll justify basically anything on the basis of "I'm just a mercenary, where you lead I follow as long as you pay me."

Whereas Byleth, once given the chance to move on from being a mercenary, makes choices based on what they perceive as right and wrong. Even if they choose Edelgard, it's based on an emotional impulse that it's the right thing to do at the time. Byleth functions much more as a moral guide (for better or worse) to their friends and students than Shez does because Shez doesn't seem to really care about morals at all. Shez never needs to question this mindset or grow beyond it because Shez is never put in the position of a real leader.

[certifieddragonenjoyer]

something something I find it kind of weird in hindsight how when people talk about why Dimitri is sympathetic they always point to his trauma and then when they talk about why Edelgard is sympathetic they tend to point to how she's right about the Crest system but not really acknowledge how she is just as shaped by her trauma as Dimitri, if not more, and I wonder how much of that has to do with Dimitri being Visibly Unwell a lot of the time post timeskip whereas Edelgard tends to either hide or rationalize all her negative emotions so on the surface she seems like she's perfectly stoic and acting based on logic alone when this thing is being driven with both Edelgard the Emperor's and Edelgard the scared little girl's hands on the wheel

[umbralstars]

Yeah I'll throw my hat into the ring here. First of all I will say that I do think you're right. I've been in this fandom since before the game came out so my credentials here are "I know the Deep Magic" and so and so forth. That being said, I have noticed that people who both like and hate Edelgard tend to ignore how trauma has shaped her character, her actions, and most people tend to treat her like every decision she makes is one based upon logic. When this isn't true, like at all. Edelgard presents all of her choices as being logical, but taking that at face value is wrong cause a lot of it isn't. So much blood and ink has been spilt over how she treats other characters and her actions, but I think so much breath could be saved by acknowledging "Edelgard makes decisions based on emotion, rationalizes her emotions via logic and her biases; and thus, fundamentally believes that she is right even when she actively contradicted and proven wrong (either by other characters or the totality of the lore)." Which I don't think is a bad thing. For me, that makes her a really compelling villain and character (and I Like her as a villain). And I think it's a shame that Edelgard's trauma, her upbringing in Adrestian nobility (which Does leave her with biases she's unaware of), and even her own emotional thinking is ignored by pretty much everyone. Making her a cackling villain who likes to make people suffer for fun or a 100% logical revolutionary who Always Right doesn't do it for me, and never has. Nor do I think either reading is really supported by canon. But nuance is dead ig.

Just as an aside, I won't lie I personally don't like Crimson Flower like at all and I Do think that devs themselves got confused with her writing at times which is unfortunate. Also personally Dimitri rings closer to home for me because he's closer to issues that I've dealt with, and I'm gonna leave it there cause I don't want to rehash Fandom Bullshit I've borne witness too.

(That being said as an aside: I'll just say that I don't think "Crest system" is a very good metric which I why I didn't mention it above. This is a completely fan-created concept that doesn't mesh with what's actually presented in-game. Fódlan does not have a unified "Crest system" because each country canonically has different cultures around how Crests are viewed and privileged, so what I'm getting at is "there's nuance here." Edelgard is not strictly wrong nor is she completely right (especially with Adrestia cause their Crest culture is Very Bad); but this starts to tend towards how I personally view her views towards Faerghus, Leicester, and Garreg Mach has being inherently imperialistic no matter how it's sliced. But I don't wanna harp on that; I made it clear I personally enjoy her as a villain)

[certifieddragonenjoyer]

As much as a disservice as it feels like to boil down all my feelings about Edelgard to a meme, I remember once summarizing it as: 'we wrote a morally gray character-' you messed up a perfectly good anti-villain is what you did. Look at her. She's got tonal dissonance

As you said, I've noticed that even people who really like Edelgard tend to act like she's 100% logical and reasonable and acting only for the greater good of Fodlan when she just... isn't. I'm sure she genuinely believes what she's doing is right but she's also doing it because the experimentation she was put through as a child destroyed her life and it's influence is constantly hanging over what little years she has left. To me it feels a bit like the classic 'character puts on a front and the audience falls for it as well.' I think Edelgard very badly wants to believe she's the noble and pragmatic Emperor, because acknowledging that she's partially doing this out of pain would mean confronting just how helpless she was as a child, which she can't do, because it was so awful that it's left her clawing for any sense of control over her life that she can hang onto, imcluding control over her own emotions. Her complaints about the Church and Fodlan's Crest culture are, from the perspective of people who don't know the truth about Fodlan's past, very reasonable, but part of her motivation is unreasonable, and that kind of emotion is weakness, and all of her siblings are dead because their weakness was exploited so she can never let herself be weak again.

okay I'm ranting now but agh. Edelgard has had like a whole arc for me going from the character i bought the game for, to someone I really disliked (for basically no deeper reason then that i felt personally betrayed by the flame emperor twist bc I BOUGHT THIS GAME FOR YOU AND YOU'RE LEAVING ME? lmao), to eventually coming back around as a character who I love who I think suffered from mishandled writing. She has a wonderful foundation with very mixed execution (why does the closet thing to a full arc she has post time skip happen iN AZURE MOON WHY DOES SHE NOT MEANINGFULLY GRAPPLE WITH ALMOST ANYTHING IN CRIMSON FLOWER). I could go off on a whole other isn't about how both her and Rhea have been done dirty even by people who like them but i digress

Free my girl get her into a game where the people will just let her be a villain with a sympathetic backstory who has some good points but needs to chill out with the unprovoked invasions

[umbralstars]

Omgs you get it!! Yes! I like her and find her really compelling for these reasons. Also I agree her route should've let her have an actual arc with her confronting the things you Only learn on that route, but I digress.

Edelgard Genuinely believes what she is doing is "for the greater good" and refused to be swayed no matter what, which is the Great part of her as an antagonist and character in general. But also so much of her is wrapped up in trauma and weakness she Never wants to admit to or feel again and it does make her sympathetic even when her actions can veer towards downright evil. I think she's so cool for that. Also how her desire for control over her own life has spilt over into how she's trying to control others into her wanting Complete Control over all of Fódlan because she in a position to vye for it and believes she's Right-- augh she can be so damn intriguing.

Sorry I'm repeating myself this is a breath of fresh air ksnxjd. Tl;dr I think your reading is good and cool

[vieryplus]

New friends in Jehanna

[sacredxnight]

oh yeah it's holy dragon science experiment mom & daughter time

[sailforvalinor]

Yes the fact that Byleth sees Dimitri at his lowest and not only takes his hand and leads him out of the darkness and inspires him to become the king she always saw in him, but loves him in spite of his belief that he is unloveable, is absolutely beautiful and makes me want to weep, but can we also talk about how Dimitri sees this woman, whose own father didn’t really know what to do with her, who has always only been valued—by those she worked for, by those she worked with, by her students, even by her peers—for what she could do with a sword, this woman whose only form of self-worth has come from her identity as a weapon—and he calls her beloved. CAN WE TALK ABOUT THAT

[sailforvalinor]

Byleth humanizes Dimitri in the big, earth-shattering ways, challenging him to take stock of the state of his own morality and soul and understand the value of his own life, but Dimitri in turn humanizes Byleth in the small things, in the minutia—when others gawk or shudder at her skill with a blade, he tells her that he loves her smile. He has watched those hands as they’ve dealt in death. “Have your hands always been so warm?” he asks.

[owlyjules]

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!  ITS A NEW DECADE!! I hope you all a wonderful night and I hope the next decade will be good for all of us.:)✨✨

See you all in 2020!

[madcat-world]

From OwlyJules

[plotthotrobin]

“Robin, why do you use fem!Byleth so often if you hate the outfit so much? Don’t you headcanon them as being non-binary anyway? Does it matter which one you pick? Besides, I thought you like both versions?” I hear nobody ask, and yet am compelled to answer anyways.

This is the face of someone who is Tired™️. If you’re watching them grading papers, you cannot tell how well the class is doing. They just, “Hm.” and stamp a grade onto the corner of the page the same way regardless of if they’re disappointed or not. You come up to them and ask them for advice and they mull it over for .5 seconds before giving you either a blunt answer that you beat yourself up for not thinking of sooner, or something so oddly profound that you spend the night mulling it over. This energy works well for Byleth, I get the appeal! But consider…

Look at this fucker. Look at those big ol’ bug eyes. This is the face of a Creature™️. They ask to join you for lunch, and as you’re sitting in the dining hall and watching them you’re half convinced they’re going to just unhinge their jaw and swallow their meal whole. This dude cuts their own hair with a dagger à la Jeralt. I can believe them when they say they’ve been sleeping in a river for the last five years. They are, in fact, the autism creature:

No poorly-designed outfit and weird lack of muscles and scars can take away the sheer menace to society that is this version of Byleth.

[fantasyinvader]

You know, for all the talk about Hopes we’ve been having lately... I think people tend to not realize that Hopes is meant to be the bad timelines. Case-in-point, in the prologue when Shez goes Super Agarthan, the music that plays (and will play whenever it’s activated in gameplay) is titled “Dark Dawning.”

What does “dawning” mean? It’s something beginning or coming into existence, and whatever is devoid of light due to the connotations of it being labelled dark. In essence, Shez’s battle theme might as well be titled “Start of Darkness,” indicating the negative effects their presence has in derailing the story.

Golden Wildfire is NOT supposed to be a good path for Claude, Azure Gleam is not the good path for Dimitri, nor is Scarlet Blaze the good path for the Black Eagles as Hopes is a bit more blunt with what it means for them to serve Edelgard. Ferdinand is fighting for someone who imprisoned his father without evidence yet her word is still law. We have Caspar giving into his bloodlust, or the admission that Edelgard’s reforms oppress commoners and Dorothea is considered a peer by the nobility. Not to mention that if Petra dies fighting for Edelgard, she will have betrayed her country. Linhardt will join in Caspar’s paralogue about wiping out imperial citizens who are rebelling against Edelgard (among other side missions attacking people like refugees or forcibly conscripting civilians), and then there’s Bernie having to spend time with her father. They even throw in Monica being someone Edelgard knew and ultimately let be sacrificed, as well as Edelgard and Byleth being attracted to each other the result of their Crests resonating and that Edelgard’s makes it know she knows not to trust a word out of her own mouth.

And then there’s the implication that this all still happens if Byleth doesn’t either reject Edelgard or recruit the Black Eagles to other routes in Houses, showing that Flower isn’t their good path either.

[tierras]

isabella vik

[etheringtonbrothers]

SWORD ANGLES from my tutorials BOOKS, on KICKSTARTER in MARCH!

Lorenzo!

[pandp-author]

The biggest issue with trying to discuss about Rhea and her faults is that the discussion is almost always framed in giving her the least charitable explanation behind why she did what did or does (which has mostly been debunked by the Nintendo dream interview) as well as assuming that she's indeed guilty of everything she's been accused of (mostly by edelgard and later Claude, even though they're the complete opposite of a unbiased source, so their claims *at best* can only be taken with a big spoonful of salt)

[9thwither]

And it doesn't help the games themselves don't engage much with Rhea's character outside of which character benefits from her.

Like, HEROES treats her more of her own character and I'll scream dying in this hill.

[fantasyinvader]

Part of it’s always going to be the mystery element of Fodlan. Rhea, as revealed in Silver Snow’s epilogue, has been a figure bringing salvation to the people of Fodlan and this is supposed to be reinforced with the revelations of Verdant Wind. This is in spite of White Cloud and how the game initially wants the player to be suspicious of her. It’s the other half of the twist alongside Edelgard being the villain all along. The reveals about Nabatea and the Agarthans are also late-game spoilers, happening before the penultimate chapters of Snow and Wind.

Those reveals, at the end of the game, are meant to be the most weighty and put everything into focus.

As said, the Nintendo Dream interview should have ended all this bullshit, but alas it revealed a discrepancy between the original script and the one released in the West. Let’s look at the other twist for a second, Edelgard being the villain. Instead of backing this up, the translation mischaracterized her ass. Whereas the Japanese had her as someone who would use every opportunity she could, be they her supports or goddess tower event, she was attempting to sway Byleth to her side with worldbuilding pointing to what she was saying not being true. She was written as lying to the player alongside using propaganda or manipulating the Agarthans, but instead we have someone who wished she could have swayed Byleth into joining her, the information campaign is removed and it’s the Agarthans who are simply manipulating her into killing Rhea... so they made Rhea look bad rather than acknowledge Edelgard was evil. They’ll make Rhea out to be a tyrant rather than a savior, Crests really do oppress people, and make it so the Church needs to be rehabilitated to collaborate Edelgard’s story. Meanwhile, Edelgard brings “freedom” to the people despite Hubert’s ending pointing to a police state, Caspar’s endings leave out her invade other nations after the war, and it wasn’t that her path was one of military rule, as Treehouse translated Hadou in Verdant Wind, it was one where she was all alone. And who cares that she was tricked by the Agarthans into killing Rhea, Rhea had it coming and Edelgard takes out the Agarthans anyway. And without Edelgard, Byleth is left a “wandering flame” rather than the Flame that Seeks Their Destiny. Never mind that Rhea is linked with lilies representing purity and Edelgard was meant to be linked with safflowers representing attraction, now Edelgard is linked to a red rose symbolizing true love.

The translation tries to tweak the language to make Houses tell a different story than the one described by the Nintendo Dream interview. I mean, look at the stuff I just cited and tell me they’re trying to say the same thing. So when the game reveals that Rhea is a force for good and Fodlan’s problems are because of humans, that is undermined by the translation trying to support one of it’s villains, which in turn led to people trying to defend a bunch of emo racists.

[maiavonsneeper]

[emblemxeno]

a long time mutual of mine called edel a communist icon and i felt my whole being recoil........ its so hard sometimes because i dont interact with 3h or 3h fandom since im active for a different fe game but a lot of my fe acquaintances reveal they have positive feelings about her in a "shes right" kind of way and i hate that it automatically makes me lose respect for them. i hate that i even have to even think about this 3h discourse but it bugs me /so much/ how shes still viewed like that, 5 years and many extreme world events later. also thank you for your posts you make me feel sane again.

You're welcome and thank you for the kind words

What's crazy about giving Edelgard the communist label is that she misses many important marks of communist theory pretty handily: allocating resources to everyone according to their needs and ability, complete absence of private property or social statuses, eventually eliminating money and the nation-state.

She doesn't believe in allocation of resources based on needs and ability, she only believes in "people who work hard enough and correctly according to the emperor will get more"; she gets closest in her support with Linhardt but ultimately misses the swing by a mile because if she were an actual communist, she wouldn't have to twist her brain into a pretzel to accomodate someone who'd rather not work, and that's including a friend of hers.

She doesn't believe in the absence of private property or social status, because there are still high status, private property owners under her rule in CF. No, the only problem she has with status and property in Fodlan is the current method of attaining them, which is mostly hereditary and blood based. She has no issue of there being higher classes and privatized property so long as they prove to her and future emperors that they "worked for it."

There's never an indication that she wants money to eventually be done away with.

And desiring collapse of the nation state? The one with the map select line "for the Empire" and the goal of forced militarized unification of those who she deems are opponents who disagree with her aims? Yeah, that ain't her lmao.

Hell, take an example from Xenoblade 3, where the entire game is about rejecting wealth established leadership that profits off of militarization, and Noah, in response to Alexandria asking if her and Colony Iota (themselves a blend of merit/harworking allocation and utilitarianism) will be "useful" he says, "It doesn't matter. I don't see people that way."

People don't have to be useful, have merit, or anything similar to be deserving of basic rights, decency, security and comfort. Everyone deserves the baseline and the ability to get ahead, not rejected the opportunity nor have a lowered ceiling of accomplishment due to a single individual's (i.e. an Emperor's) perception of their failings.

Hell, Edelgard and Hubert's 'Likes' include "Talented individuals" and "Useful people" respectively. They like preaching that only they know what's best and what's worth it in the end, centralizing knowledge and power to their positions and letting people they deem worthy to have higher capabilities.

Pretty anti-communist to me idk

[ikazooks]

murderpilled self-hatredmaxxer

[fantasyinvader]

Found another Pat thing.

Remember Byleth’s solo ending in Flower, where it talks about how Byleth fights to bring about “true peace”? There’s another mention of “true peace,” and it’s an ending connected to the solo one. The Jeritza ending, where it’s shown that the “sword” Byleth continues to use isn’t the Sword of the Creator but the Sword of Seiros instead. These are final lines of the ending, translated through DeepL: “But one day, the two heroes disappeared from the stage of history. Never again would the menace stirring in the depths of Fodlan return. But the world will never know the whereabouts of the heroes who fought for true peace.”

Jertiza throws himself into the battle with TWSITD even in his solo ending, so there’s I think this would confirm that even in Byleth’s solo ending TWSITD is taken out despite the history texts saying Byleth will continue to fight for “true peace.” Now think about that context of the S support with Jeritza, where they talk about how they will one day fight each other after the Slithers are taken out and how this may be “love.” Their love, regardless of gender, will result in Byleth fighting a mentally ill man to the death and then disappearing. Hell, Jeritza disappears in his solo ending as well, so it probably happens unless he has a different paired ending.

I think there’s a deeper implication to this, however. Much like how various endings in Flower are meant to link together, to give hint to the truth of Edelgard’s rule (hell, the aforementioned endings pretty much state that Edelgard is rewriting history to make herself look good... while the Jeritza ending has them referred to as “heroes” in what the Japanese specifies as Adrestian history books), these endings imply that Byleth really doesn’t have anything to live for. Byleth takes out TWSITD in the name of “true peace” and then disappears. Never mind that Hubert is putting down rebellions against Edelgard, or that the Imperial army is marching on other nations, taking out TWSITD is enough for Byleth to be done and they’ll just fuck off. If the Jertiza ending is any indication... perhaps Byleth wants to see if Jeritza can kill them as well. Regardless of gender, Byleth has this option to enter into the mother of unhealthy relationships at the end of Flower with the game linking it to their solo ending.

Byleth is suicidal at the end of Flower, and we saw hints of this in the Hubert support where they say they need to be killed if they can’t maintain their “humanity.” Byleth doesn’t have a place of their own in Edelgard’s NWO, whatever life they live is fully dependant on their partner. Meanwhile, while Empire makes them out to be a hero, the texts at the end reveal that historians know about the shadow war, they call Hubert evil for what he does to support Edelgard, and we also get the implications that Edelgard’s reforms fail. The empire might call Byleth a hero, but to others they are the one who enabled Edelgard to conquer the continent and then invade other nations. The “Wings of the Hegemon” is not meant to be a good thing because it associates Byleth with the rise of a tyrant. Meanwhile, “The Flame that Seeks their Own Destiny,” the title Byleth gets for walking their own path, is instead changed to “Wandering Flame” implying they are lost in the world without Edelgard or the other lords.

Let's just look at Byleth's solo ending one more time. Adrestian history calls Byleth a hero according to the Jeritza ending, but we also have that same history saying that Byleth lost their powers due to an injury. This is discounted both by what we see, as well as the Japanese Sothis support heavily implying Byleth lost their powers because they broke Sothis' heart causing her to leave while leaving behind the Sothis that knew Byleth. Still, the Imperial history implies Byleth is still using the SotC, which is shown false in the Jeritza ending. Byleth fights for true peace in theirs, while is said to bring about true peace in the Jertiza ending before disappearing in the same manner Jeritza does in their solo ending.

But sure Pat, tell me that Edelgard is meant to be the hero.