Terminal Blorboism

22 | they/them, she/her, it/its | blorbo sideblog

[sunlightkitty001]

Hi this is my, um, fandom sideblog? I don't know if that's quite what it should be called or if that's quite how I'm going to use this blog, I'm just so so embarrassed about obsessing over The Character on my mainblog and I want to isolate it somewhere else.

I did not necessarily intend to make the whole blog Linhardt themed, but I guess it kinda just happened. Maybe I'll change things as my interests drift. Right now though the blorbo blog is blorbo themed

[faerghusfucker]

happy pride month to whatever these two have going on. part 2 💕

[zyphemblem]

What sort of instruments do you think all the FE3H kiddos play, and who do you think is the "best" in each class? (spoons are included as instruments for the purpose of this ask)

YES FINALLY I CAN TALK ABOUT THIS. you actually do not understand how long i’ve been waiting for a good opportunity to yap about this. i’ve literally made an entire orchestra seating chart for the 3h characters like… can you tell i’m a musician. i stuck to standard orchestral instruments for everyone and i somehow (completely unintentionally) made a decently balanced orchestra. just because i’ve already thought about this for everyone, i’ll give you pretty much all the 3h characters.

edelgard, hubert, petra, jeritza, felix, mercedes, lorenz, rodrigue - violin

ferdinand, claude, catherine, shamir - viola

linhardt, dorothea, ashe, seteth, judith - cello

lysithea, cyril - double bass

rhea - harp

flayn - piccolo/flute

bernadetta, ignatz, manuela - flute

annette, marianne - oboe

constance - english horn/oboe

sylvain, hanneman - clarinet

byleth, yuri - bassoon

caspar, leonie, alois, balthus - trumpet

dedue, gilbert, nader - french horn

dimitri, ingrid, hapi - trombone

hilda - tuba

raphael, anna - percussion

as for the best in each class, for BE it’s bernie since she canonically plays an instrument. for BL, based on absolutely nothing I just feel like it would be dedue. for GD, claude. hes the kind of guy to show up in an orchestra as someone new and make everyone feel bad about themselves.

other random instrument thoughts for them: lysithea is the really short person who you’d never guess plays bass but she’ll get mad if you say that. constance plays english horn as well as oboe loterally just because different and get more solo parts. edelgard is concertmaster (basically most important person and leader of the orchestra other than the conductor) and hubert is assistant concertmaster. ferdinand plays viola instead of violin because he thought he could be section leader that way (and be better than hubert) but then claude showed up. catherine and shamir are stand partners for life and you should never separate them. linhardt is easily the best cello player but actively hates being principal/first chair so much that any time he’s put there he plays worse on purpose. hilda picked tuba because it sounded like it had the easiest parts but now has to deal with lugging a tuba around.

as a viola player i’m obligated to point out that claude is maybe the most viola player person in this game. iykyk. if not, then i’m sorry.

i have so many thoughts about the 3h cast in an orchestra together and i’m so happy you asked this. i honestly might make another post about this soon with more of my thoughts n stuff.

thanks for the ask anon, this was such a great one :)

[zyphemblem]

guess who finally finished editing everything! yeah, me, somehow. that took so much longer than i initially anticipated, but oh well, because it’s done now and infinitely better than all the original versions. i’m really happy with how they’ve all turned out. claude and linhardt now have good supports that are definitely 100% just rewrites of what are in the game because they totally have supports in the game except no they don’t bc intsys hates us. there’s also an additional surprise at the end :)

for all the people who read the first versions here and have read the new improved versions, thanks so much for sticking with me as i figured out how to actually write. i might’ve mentioned this before but this was my first posting, let alone even finishing, writing. other than annoying school writing. so it’s been a journey, but i’m very glad for it. once again, thanks for reading :)

[i-love-my-blorbo-polls]

Which deadly sin does your blorbo embody?

Pride

Envy

Wrath

Gluttony

Lust

Sloth

Greed

Voting ended onJun 1

This blog offers polls about “blorbos”, or fictional characters which you are attached to and really love. All polls are made by the blog owner unless otherwise stated, at which point we will credit the submitter or anon if they wish not to be named. We recommend you read through all the answers before answering yourself, as we have similar answers or multiple may be true. We want to make sure you can vote the best option possible and not be disappointed when you realize a different answer fit better.

[characteranalyses]

Character Analysis: Raphael Kirsten (Fire Emblem: Three Houses)

Who is Raphael?

Raphael is one of the most underestimated characters in Three Houses because the game lets his surface be so easy to summarise - he's big, cheerful, hungry, obsessed with training, and often used for comic rhythm in a cast full of sharper tongues and more obviously dramatic wounds. If you only stop at that level, he can look like a one-note joke about muscles and meals, but the supports tell a fuller story; Raphael has lost both parents, taken on a strong sense of responsibility toward his little sister Maya, and chosen to keep living in a way that's open, practical, and generous instead of letting grief turn him bitter. That choice is part of his depth, not evidence that he has none.

He also occupies a useful place in the Golden Deer because he stabilises the house without needing to dominate it intellectually or politically; Claude carries secrets, Lorenz ideology, Lysithea urgency, Marianne despair, Ignatz guilt, and Raphael often becomes the person least interested in making his own pain the centre of the room. That doesn't mean he lacks pain, but it means he has a very different relationship to it; he keeps moving, eating, training, trying to be dependable, and offering a kind of kindness that's direct enough to cut through other people's spirals. The game gives him less ornate writing than some of the flashier characters, but his emotional function is extremely deliberate.

There's also a maturity to him that people tend to miss because he isn't self-consciously profound. Raphael doesn't spend much time theorising about suffering or turning it into identity - he's capable of sadness, but he's much more interested in what can still be done next: get stronger, help Maya, eat well, protect people, keep going. A lot of media teaches players to read complexity only when it arrives through irony, bitterness, detachment, or elaborate self-analysis, while Raphael's complexity is much plainer than that. He understands loss very well and he's decided not to let it rot him from the inside.

Psychology

Raphael is one of the clearest examples in the game of someone who's experienced serious grief without organising his whole self around damage. His parents died in an accident, and that loss clearly changed the course of his life; he's taken on a much stronger sense of responsibility, especially toward Maya, and several of his supports make it obvious that he's had to grow up fast in very practical ways. The notable part isn't that he escaped pain, but that he responds to pain with appetite for life rather than withdrawal from it.

That doesn't make him shallow or emotionally simple. Raphael understands grief more than people give him credit for, especially in supports where someone else is stuck inside fear. The Ignatz material is the clearest example - Ignatz carries guilt over the circumstances connected to Raphael's parents' deaths, and Raphael refuses to let that guilt define their relationship. He doesn't do this because he's too dim to understand what happened, but because he understands very clearly that neither Ignatz nor his parents caused the tragedy, and he sees no value in making more lives smaller around an injury that's already happened.

He also has an unusually healthy relationship to embodiment compared with a lot of the cast; Raphael likes food, training, physical effort, and often approaches life through the body first - strength, stamina, work, hunger, growth. It would be easy to reduce that to comic simplicity, but it also reads like someone grounding himself very intentionally in what's alive and available. He isn't chasing abstractions about meaning all the time, but eating, moving, building, lifting, helping. For a character who's lost so much early on, that physical straightforwardness feels less like stupidity and more like a way of staying present.

Another thing the game handles quietly well is that Raphael isn't ashamed of needing joy. He doesn't act as though seriousness requires permanent austerity. He can grieve his parents and still want a good meal. He can miss them and still laugh loudly. He can worry about Maya and still get excited about muscles. Some players mistake his lack of visible self-punishment for lack of depth, when it often suggests the opposite: a person who's already decided that love for the dead doesn't have to look like destroying the life still in front of him.

Strengths and Flaws

Raphael's first major strength is emotional resilience. He has every reason to have become guarded, resentful, or fatalistic, and he simply hasn't. The game doesn't pretend his parents' deaths did nothing to him, but it shows a boy who's absorbed that loss and turned it into a more protective, grounded way of living, and that kind of resilience is easy to underrate because it doesn't come wrapped in dramatic speeches.

He's also genuinely kind. Raphael's kindness isn't polished or poetic, but it's unusually clean - he tends to mean what he says, help when he can, and react to other people's fear or awkwardness without much malice. His supports often work because his honesty strips away the elaborate defenses other characters are hiding behind. With someone like Marianne or Ignatz, he can sound almost startlingly simple, and that simplicity often helps more than a more delicate or intellectual response would.

A third strength is maturity in the practical sense. He isn't socially refined, but he's often more adult than people around him in the ways that matter most. He knows what responsibility looks like - he's thinking about Maya, earning enough, becoming strong enough to protect others, and continuing his life rather than freezing at the site of loss. He has a very clear sense of proportion - tragedy happened, but people still need to eat, work still needs doing, someone still has to keep going - which is very much a form of wisdom.

He also has a disarming lack of vanity about his own image. He likes his strength and takes visible pleasure in it, but he isn't really curating himself as impressive in the way some characters do. He isn't trying to seem tragic, sophisticated, noble, or mysterious, which makes him much easier to underestimate and, paradoxically, much more emotionally secure than a lot of the cast.

His flaws are real, just less severe than some players seem to want from a "serious" character. He can be blunt to the point of insensitivity, especially with people who are more anxious, private, or easily embarrassed. Raphael often charges through subtle emotional weather because he assumes sincerity and straightforwardness will be enough, and sometimes they aren't.

He can also be narrow in focus. Food, training, muscles, and immediate practical concerns take up a lot of his attention, and there are times when he seems less interested in complexity than in the next concrete thing he can do - which keeps him grounded, but can also make him seem less perceptive than he actually is until the game gives him a support where his deeper understanding becomes unmistakeable.

A third flaw is that he sometimes overcompensates through cheerfulness and motion. Raphael is healtheir than many of his classmates, but there are moments where his refusal to linger in sorrow can feel like a limit as well as a strength. He doesn't wallow, which is good, but he also doesn't always make much room for more unresolved or ambivalent versions of grief, either in himself or others. His answer is often to keep living, eating, training, moving, which is admirable, but it isn't the only emotional language people need.

Relationships

IGNATZ VICTOR Ignatz is one of the most important relationships for understanding Raphael because the death of Raphael's parents is tangled up with Ignatz's family history. A lesser character would turn that into permanent bitterness or use it to claim moral superiority - Raphael does something more difficult. He refuses to hold Ignatz responsible for what neither boy chose, and that refusal says more about his character than almost any inspirational monologue could. He doesn't deny the tragedy, but he refuses to let inherited guilt become the centre of his friendship. That decision makes him look extraordinarily emotionally mature beside a cast full of people who are far more tempted to let pain dictate their relationships - take, for instance, Petra and her anger toward Caspar for his father killing hers (which is an equally understandable reaction).

MAYA KIRSTEN Maya brings out the most responsible part of Raphael. His concern for her future gives his life a concrete direction that goes beyond eating and training jokes, and it makes clear that his optimism isn't the optimism of someone who's never had to carry real weight - he has, he simply carries it without theatricality. Thinking about Maya also helps explain why Raphael values strength in such a grounded way; he doesn't want strength only for self-image or competition, but to be capable enough that the people depending on him will be safe.

FLAYN Flayn draws out Raphael's gentleness without requiring angst to do it. Their supports tend to make his warmth look almost domestic: patient, curious, good-humoured, and much softer than the Big Loud Muscle Guy impression would suggest. She helps show that his appetite and physicality aren't crude or threatening qualities in him - they exist alongside a very easy protectiveness and an ability to meet someone more delicate without trying to harden them.

MARIANNE VON EDMUND Marianne is one of the clearest examples of Raphael helping someone whose suffering looks very different from his own. He doesn't overcomplicate her pain, and he doesn't romanticise it either - he tends to meet her with steadiness, normalcy, and a sense that life can still contain small pleasures and ordinary movement even when someone feels deeply stuck. Their dynamic works because Raphael never seems to need her to be brighter or easier in order to keep treating her kindly.

Just for Fun / Typology

MBTI - ESFP What stands out first is how naturally he leads with Se - he lives through the body, appetite, action, and what's concretely in front of him. Food, muscles, training, work, movement, physical capability - none of that is decorative to him. It's the way he relates to life. He grounds himself in doing and in being alive in very immediate ways.

Fi fits the inner core that people often miss because it's expressed so plainly. Raphael has a strong personal value system, and it governs him much more than detached logic or social expectation does. His forgiveness of Ignatz, devotion to Maya, instinct to keep living fully after loss, and refusal to let grief calcify into spite all point to a private moral centre that's stable, sincere, and not especially performative. He doesn't spend much time arguing values abstractly, he simply lives by them.

MORAL ALIGNMENT - Neutral Good He doesn't feel strongly Lawful or Chaotic. Structure is useful to him when it helps people live, train, eat, and stay safe, but he isn't especially invested in hierarchy, duty for its own sake, or rebellion for its own sake either. His attention stays much closer to immediate human wellbeing than to ideology or system.

The Good side is clearer; Raphael is consistently generous, protective, forgiving, and willing to orient his life around other people's needs without becoming self-righteous about it. He can be blunt, narrow, and occasionally tactless, but his instincts run toward care much more reliably than toward self-interest or domination. His version of goodness is earthy and practical, which is probably one reason it gets overlooked next to louder, more tortured characters.

Conclusion

Raphael has more depth than he's usually given credit for because the game gives him one of the quietest forms of maturity in the cast. He has trauma, but he doesn't turn trauma into identity. He has grief, but he doesn't mistake grief for the whole truth of his life. He understands suffering well enough to know that he'd rather answer it with food, strength, protection, laughter, and continued affection than with bitterness, which is a real character choice, not an absence of characterisation.

He's still funny, simple in some ways, and very much the big appetite-and-muscles guy on the surface - the point is that the surface isn't the whole thing. Raphael is one of the game's more emotionally grounded portraits of loss because he shows that pain doesn't always have to announce itself through collapse, cynicism, or overt self-destruction to be real.

[arabian-batboy]

Eid Mubarak to everyone celebrating 💛🌙

[boomgun]

You know, considering how much Claude likes to learn about things and then talk about things he has just learned, he really must have been going a little bit crazy being stuck in environments where no one trusts his word.

[boomgun]

Try to remember your first fixation as a child, bugs or dinosaurs or trains, and almost no one believes a word you said about it even after reading lots of books about the subject.

[gaydisastervassal]

This is the most relatable Claude has ever been in my life, thank you OP.

[asphodelis]

my favorite girl!!

[remosss]

catching up on posting some zine art- these were my dagda and brigid inspired pages for the FE3H Wanderlust zine!

[milquetify]

[ottoillustrates]

I can make any character aromantic.

[mermaidhugs]

Picnic alts when instys!!!!!!!!!!! when!!!!!!!!!

[catarata02]

are any of us immune to the tomodachi bug….

edeleth miis!! wish i could say they’re already married and in love on my island but edelgard actually mega rejected byleth’s confession yesterday… it’s the first time it’s actually happened with any of my miis too😭😭usually they end up accepting at least One confession

LIKE WHATTTTT</33333 canon edelgard would beat my ass if she saw this.. but byleth’s still in love with her so there’s hope!!! my girl’s a migajera apparently

side note but goddamn is the switch screen recording quality ASS. i imported the clips of em moving from my sd card but they still look crunchy asf🥀

[theninthnoah]

Playing 3 routes at the same time makes me appreciate how fe3h sets up each of the lords’ goals and arcs early. Conversations that sound like typical worldbuilding infodumps are actually the lords’ biases coming through in what information they consider important enough to explain to you

[arabian-batboy]

Tried my hand at drawing Claude in the Arabic version of his Hopes outfit from this commission

[real-fire-emblem-takes]

"Who gave Caspar that fuckass haircut" Bitch, EVERYONE has a fuckass haircut in Three Hopes. That game's designs are so scuffed that it made my eyes bleed

.

[sunlightkitty001]

WRONG! Linhardt be upon ye!